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THE HOUSE 
OF HELEN 


CORRA HARRIS 



THE 

HOUSE OF HELEN 


BY 

CORRA HARRIS 

AUTHOR OF U A DAUGHTER OF ADAM,” “THE EYES OF LOVE,” 

“my son,” “happily married,” “a circuit rider’s 
WIFE,” “the RECORDING ANGEL,” ETC. 

AND IN COLLABORATION WITH FAITH HARRIS LEECH I 
“FROM SUNUP TO sundown” 



) > 


9 


5 

•> 


NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1923 , 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



* 4 


COPYRIGHT, 1922 , 1923 , 

BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

THE HOUSE OF HELEN. II 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

SEP 17 23'< fi- 

©C1A752932 * 



PART ONE 





\ 




THE 

HOUSE OF HELEN 


PART ONE 

CHAPTER I 

The town of Shannon lay like a wreath flung 
wide upon the hills above one of those long, green, 
fertile valleys to be seen everywhere below the 
Blue Ridge Mountains in North Georgia. It was 
nothing like a city, merely a neat, little town built 
by thrifty people since the Civil War. There¬ 
fore, there were no colonial residences in it to 
remind you of the strutting, magnificent past, but 
the houses in it were smaller, painted any color 
that pleased the fancy, ruffled from end to end, 
with spindle-legged porches and scalloped gables. 
White church spires stuck up out of it like the 
forefingers of faith in God. There was a town 
square, around which business was done com¬ 
fortably and leisurely on a credit basis. 

7 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


The red-brick courthouse stood in this square, 
with a long, wide flight of white cement steps to 
it, showing like the teeth of the law; not that any 
one minded these teeth. The dome of this court¬ 
house was covered with galvanized tin. It shone 
above the tufted trees on bright days like an im¬ 
mense silver helmet. And beneath this helmet 
there was the town clock, a good, old man with 
a plain, round face with only the wrinkles that 
marked the hours on it. Half the men in Shan¬ 
non who carried watch chains carried no watches 
because this clock was so infallibly faithful to 
the sun. 

At the time of which I write no one in Shan¬ 
non called the narrow or even the wide spaces, 
which separated their respective homes from the 
street, a lawn. It was the “front yard,” and usu¬ 
ally divided with a picket fence from the back 
yard, where the hens attended to business. Flow¬ 
ers, of the kind in service to “ladies” who wear 
aprons and do their own work and have an art¬ 
less affection for blooming things, inhabited these 
front yards, regardless of law and order in the 
matter of background or perspective. The for- 
sythia, syringas, roses and altheas had been 
planted with reference to their health in relation 
to the sun, and, whatever happened, they 

8 1 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


bloomed. Only the smaller plants, like annuals, 
were sternly disciplined. They stood up in beds 
or along the graveled walks, like spelling classes 
in a properly graded school, every one of them 
reciting a bloom after the manner of its kind. 

These ladies of Shannon also kept “potted 
plants” and exchanged cuttings. It is only after 
you have ceased to be thrifty and have become 
rich that you imprison your flowers in a conserva¬ 
tory or a greenhouse. Shannon reached this scan¬ 
dalous pinnacle of prosperity years later, but at 
this time there was what may be called minia¬ 
ture “bleachers” on the front porches in Shannon 
where red and pink and white geraniums doubled 
up gorgeous fists of bloom, and fuchsias hung their 
waxened bells in the breeze, and begonias flaunted 
their rich, dark leaves, and that unspeakably gross 
and hardy vine, the Wandering Jew, wandered at 
will. 

These flower-laden bleachers were especially 
characteristic of Wiggs Street, because this was 
the principal residence street of Shannon. And 
it was all a family affair. The nieces of the 
geraniums on Mrs. Adams’ porch bloomed on the 
porch of the Cutter home across the way. And 
Mrs. Adams had obtained the root of her sword 
fern from Mrs. Cutter, and so on and so forth. 

9 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


You might multiply it by the seeds or shoots or 
roots of ten thousand flowers. 

This was why Shannon showed like a wreath 
on the hills above the valley. The women there 
were diligent. They loved their homes. So their 
front yards looked like flowered calico aprons, 
tied onto these homes as their own aprons were 
tied about their plump waists. The women were 
very good; the men were reasonably respectable. 
There was ambition without culture. But give 
them time. Already Mr. George William Cutter 
had sent his son, young George William, to col¬ 
lege for two years. That ought to amount to 
something, culturally speaking. And Mrs. Mary 
Anne Adams was considering whether she could 
afford to send her daughter Helen to a boarding 
school for a year, or whether she would leave 
Helen to take her chances at George with only a 
high-school education and her music and a little 
drawing for accomplishments! But if she did 
decide to send Helen “off to school, 7 ’ it ought to 
amount to a great deal more, culturally speak¬ 
ing. Girls acquire the gloss of elegance and re¬ 
finement more rapidly than boys do, and it is apt 
to stay on them longer, no matter what stays in 
them. 

The first definite upward trend in a tacky little 

10 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


town begins when some insolently prosperous citi¬ 
zen sends his suburban-bred son to college just 
long enough for him to claim that he is a “col¬ 
lege man,” and when some valorous mother, 
usually a widow, follows suit and sends her 
daughter to a “seminary,” because she is not to 
be outdone by the above-mentioned prosperous 
citizen, even if she is not prosperous. When 
these two young beings return with their intel¬ 
lectual noses in the air, you may look out. The 
scenes in that town must change. 

Business gets a hunch, or somebody’s business 
goes into bankruptcy. The domestic sphere 
spins around, loses its ancient balance and the 
girl gives a really fashionable tea party, after re¬ 
moving the precious potted plants from the front 
porch and placing her tables there, if it is a 
pleasant day. These things happen and you can¬ 
not help it. Give them an inch of education 
abroad and they will take an ell of license with 
your manners, convictions, and prejudices when 
they come home. 

Nothing like this had yet happened in Shan¬ 
non. Only drummers and salesmen really knew 
and saw what was going on in the world, and no 
drummers or salesmen lived there. The town 
was passing tranquilly through its religious and 

11 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


golden-oak periods. Most people went to church, 
and everybody who was anybody had golden-oak 
furniture, including an upright piano, as distin¬ 
guished from the antiquated square piano. If the 
latter was for the present beyond their means, 
they had an elaborately carved and bracketed 
organ of the same durable wood, through which 
the Sabbath-afternoon air passed in hymnal 
strains at about the same hour it bore the aroma 
of boiling coffee on week days. 

This is a mere flash of what Shannon was in 
those days; such an impression as you might have 
received from the window of your car if you had 
been passing through on one of those fast trains 
that did not stop at Shannon, but roared by as 
if this little town did not exist. And if you knew 
all that was to happen there within the next 
twenty years to only two people, not to mention 
the remaining six thousand of her inhabitants, to 
whom a great deal more must have happened, you 
would agree that I am justified in detaining you a 
moment before beginning this tale. 

Otherwise, how could you understand that 
Helen belonged by tradition, by environment, by 
the very petunias that bordered her mother’s 
flower beds, to the Agnes tribe of meek and en¬ 
during women. I am not claiming that this is a 

12 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


wiser, abler tribe than the numerous modern 
tribes of insurgent women, many of whom have 
faced the same emergencies. I leave each one of 
you to decide that question according to your 
lights, leaving out the traditions and the petunias, 
because doubtless you have long since made way 
with them. 

My task is simply to set down here exactly 
what happened, with no more regard for the 
moral than the facts themselves carry. And so 
I give you my word that this is a true story, and 
that the events I have recorded did happen and 
that the “House of Helen” does stand to this 
day in Shannon. You may see it from the win¬ 
dow of your car, as you pass through, halfway 
down Wiggs Street, on the right-hand side, and 
facing you. It is not so large, so pretentious as 
the other residences which have taken the place 
of the cottages that stood along this street during 
the golden-oak period, but it looks different, that 
house, serene, as a house should that has weath¬ 
ered the storm and has fair weather forever 
within. 


13 


CHAPTER II 


It was a day in June, in the year 1902. They 
are much the same everywhere, only in Georgia 
there is more June in such a day. Farther 
south the withering heat hints of July; farther 
north there may be an edge of cold to the air; 
but in Georgia it is always perfectly June in 
June, all softness, fragrance, filled with the fear¬ 
less growth and bloom of every living thing—the 
sort of day that seems to hum to itself with the 
wings of a thousand bees; adolescent weather, fra¬ 
grant, soft, filled with the growth and yearning 
of every living thing from the frailest flower that 
blooms to the oldest tree and the oldest man. 

On such a day this story begins, somewhere be¬ 
tween half past three and four o’clock in the 
afternoon. The exact moment makes no differ¬ 
ence because nothing that you could see with the 
naked eye happened when the first scene was 
laid. (It is only the comedies and crimes of liv¬ 
ing that catch the eye. The great dramas and the 
great tragedies begin within, and they end there.) 
The town was somnambulent—very little traffic; 
none at all on Wiggs Street. You could only 

14 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

have known by the gentle bending of the frailer- 
stemmed flowers before the cottages on either side 
that even a breeze was passing by. But over all 
this stillness and piercing this droning silence 
came the notes of a piano, sad, sweet and fre¬ 
quently too far apart, as if this piano waited 
patiently while the performer found the next 
note, and then found it again on the keyboard. 
These desiccated fragments of Narcissus, a popu¬ 
lar instrumental piece at that time, issued from 
the parlor windows of the Adams cottage. Some 
one, who had no ear for music, but only a con¬ 
science, was practicing inside. 

Presently this conscience was satisfied, for the 
lid of the piano went down with a thud. There 
was a quick step, the whisk of white skirts in the 
darkened hall, the opening and closing of a door, 
followed by what we must infer was a sort of 
primping silence. 

Then a voice, firm and maternal, came through 
the front bedroom window on that side of the 
house: “Helen, why are you wearing your or¬ 
gandie?” 

“I don’t know, mother,” a young voice an¬ 
swered. 

I doubt if she did know. Some of the shrewd¬ 
est acts of a maiden are unintelligible to her, 

15 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

“Well, it is silly, putting on your nice things 
to go to choir practice.” 

It was silly, but one frequently makes the silli¬ 
est preparations for happiness. This is the wis¬ 
dom of youth. Age cannot beat it. 

After a pause, the same elder voice, made 
smoother—“Have you seen George*?” 

“Not in two years. Why*?” 

“He has been at home a week, hasn’t he*?” 

“I don’t know when he came.” 

The tone implied that the comings and goings 
of this George were matters of supreme indiffer¬ 
ence to her. 

“Mrs. Cutter told me his father means for him 
to work this summer.” 

No response. 

“He had three months in the University School 
of Finance last summer, she told me. This sum¬ 
mer his father plans to put him through, she 
said.” 

Still no response. 

“Don’t forget to call for my pass book at the 
bank, Helen,” this was said in a slightly higher 
key, indicating that the girl had left the room. 
“You had better go by the bank on your way to 
the church. It closes at four o’clock.” 

“Yes, mother;” and at the same moment this 

16 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


young girl came out of the house, down the steps, 
walking hurriedly. 

When she reached the street she began to move 
more sedately, giving herself an air. Her ankles 
were slim; her black satin pumps had low 
French heels. She wore a white organdie. The 
fineness, tucks and lace of her petticoat showed 
through the full skirt. The bodice was plain, fin¬ 
ished at the neck with an edge of lace, and gath¬ 
ered puffily in at the belt. The fineness, tucks 
and lace of an underbody clung daintily to her 
shoulders and showed through. The sleeves 
were short. Her arms round and very fair. A 
wide taffeta ribbon sash of pale blue, crushed 
crinklingly about her waist, was tied in a butter¬ 
fly bow behind, very stiff and upstanding. 

She wore a broad-brimmed, white leghorn hat, 
trimmed with tiny bunches of field flowers. This 
hat was tilted slightly to one side, as if she lacked 
the courage to pull it down, lest she should re¬ 
veal more than she dared tell of what she was 
and meant. It rested, therefore, at the merest, 
most innocent angle of coquetry. 

The girl herself was utterly and entrancingly 
fair. She had straight hair, of the shade called 
ash blond; no deeper golden lights in it; most 
of it hidden beneath the encompassing hat. If 

17 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


you found it, you must do so by an act of the 
imagination. And the absurd primness with 
which it lay so close and smoothly above her ears 
teased the imagination. Her skin was white, with 
that underglow of pink so faint it could scarcely 
be called color—cheeks round, not too full. The 
oval chin had the softness of youth. She had a 
mouth made for silence; it was serious. The un¬ 
der lip was a straight pink line, prettily turned, 
which did not go very far; the upper lip was dis¬ 
tinctly full in the center, with a sort of flute there 
which ended in a dainty, pointed, white scallop 
beneath the nose, and it closed purposefully over 
the lower lip. This was due to the fact that if 
she was not mindful, it let go, curled up and 
showed the only flaw she had—two lovely teeth, 
a trifle prominent because they lapped at the 
lower edge after the manner of some Anglo-Saxon 
ancestor from whom she must have inherited 
them. Her nose might amount to something later 
in life as an indication of character, but now it 
was merely a good little nose, rounded at the end 
where it should have been pointed, and too brief 
for beauty. 

The eyes were this girl’s distinguishing fea¬ 
ture. They remained so long after all her love¬ 
liness and fairness had changed and failed. They 

18 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

were large, blue, white-lidded, heavily fringed 
with lashes darker than her hair. And they 
looked at you, at him, at all the world and the 
weather, calmly, from beneath long, sweeping 
brows, as if these brows were the slender wings 
of the thoughts she had when she looked at you. 

This is what a girl is, and nothing more—love¬ 
liness, innocence, and the wordless sweet desire 
of herself. You cannot predict her. Anything 
may change her; one thing only is certain—she 
is sure to change. The woman will be profoundly 
different. This is why writers of mere fiction 
have discarded the young girl heroine. Nothing 
can make her interesting but a tragedy, until she 
develops her human perversities and attributes, 
which may require more years than the tale can 
afford. 

Helen walked sedately through Wiggs Street, 
as if every window of every house was an eye that 
observed her. But when she came to the end, 
where this street entered the public square, her gait 
changed, much as your voice changes inflection 
according to the tune you sing. This was a live¬ 
lier tune now to which she walked. She stepped 
along briskly, prettily. Her skirts whisked, her 
body swayed a little as if this might turn out to 
be a waltz. Every shop window she passed was 

19 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

a mirror, in which she caught an encouraging 
glimpse of herself. Once she halted long enough 
to draw the brim of her hat forward and sidewise. 
Then she went on, the published truth of herself 
at last. And her own mother would not have 
known her. 

Few mothers, even in that prunes-and-prism 
period, relatively speaking, would have recognized 
their daughters abroad. But every man would. 
It is Nature having her way, you understand, and 
no harm done; because in the end these maidens 
must—and they will—take Nature, which after 
all is the very nearest relative of maidenhood, into 
their confidence and be guided by her. 

The First National Bank of Shannon was no 
great institution. Still it was modestly conspicu¬ 
ous. What I mean is that you could tell at a 
glance and from a distance that this was a bank, 
not a doctor’s office, by the tall cement columns 
in front, the only example of four-legged magnifi¬ 
cence in the shakily diversified architecture sur¬ 
rounding this square. 

But Mr. George William Cutter would never 
have thought of exalting himself in a private 
office with a ground glass door, showing the title 
“President,” published on this door. He sat at 
a rolled-top desk in a space reserved for him to 

20 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


the left of the door, by a stout oaken banister 
which divided it from the lobby. The only dis¬ 
tinction he permitted himself was to sit with his 
back to the window which looked on the square. 
What was more to the point he faced the long 
cage of the bank proper, and was always in a posi¬ 
tion to see, know or at least shrewdly infer what 
was going on inside and outside in the lobby. 

But if you were a customer, seeking a loan or 
even planning to open an account, you must come 
in and face about before you could face the presi¬ 
dent. There was dignity, financial assurance, but 
no offensive pride, in his sitting posture to the 
public. He was a man with a recognized girth, 
not entirely bald. His hair was gray; so was his 
short, clipped mustache. He wore light gray 
clothes in summer and dark gray clothes in the 
winter. And he had a fine strong commercial 
countenance. He might almost have cashed it, 
his face was so well certified by a pair of shrewd 
gray eyes, as distinguished from the cunning of 
similar eyes. 

On this June afternoon he sat reared back, his 
coat thrust clear of the wide expanse of his white 
shirt front, like the wings of an old gray rooster 
cocked up on a hot day. He was smoking a black 
cigar. From time to time he shot a glance into 

21 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


the cage of the bank; and each time the corners 
of his mouth went up, the fired end of the cigar 
also went up, his eyes narrowed to a mere gray 
slit of light as sharp as a lance, and his whole 
face crinkled into an expression of humor and sat¬ 
isfaction. Sometimes an experienced turfman so 
regards a young and mettlesome colt that is being 
broken to the gait, when the colt acts up to his 
breeding, takes the bit and goes, even if he does 
waste wind and sweat in the performance. 

Directly in line with his vision a tall, broad- 
shouldered young man was standing before an 
adding machine in his shirt sleeves. This was 
George William Cutter, Junior, inducted into the 
rear end of the banking business a week since. 
He was working furiously with the halting ear¬ 
nestness of a man not accustomed to grind up 
figures in a machine and pedal them out on a 
long strip of paper with his foot. His hair was 
red and stood up like a torch on his head. His 
mouth was warped, his nose snarled, his face was 
flushed and there was an angry squint in his red 
brown eyes as he struck the keys, jerked the lever 
and slammed the pedal once in so often—forty 
little movements that kept the muscles of his big 
body in a sort of frivolous activity. 

Mr. Cutter, Senior, was thinking: “He’s got it 

22 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


in him, the go. He will make good if he can be 
made to stick. Ought to marry, ought’er marry 
right now. That would stamp him down to 
it.” 

What young George was thinking as he paused 
to mop his steaming brow was: “Gad! If three 
days in here takes it out of a fellow like this, what 
will thirty years do to him?” 

He knew that he was being groomed to succeed 
his father. It might be a bright future for a 
young man, but as a human being it held no 
brighter prospect than escaping from this cage and 
sitting where his father sat now, fat and seden¬ 
tary in all his habits. He was restless. He was 
red-headed. He was an athlete on the university 
team. There had been some question about 
whether he should take his final year. He would 
let the “old man” know that he was willing and 
anxious to go back to the university in the fall. 
He was not ready to be imprisoned for life with 
dollars, not yet! 

At this moment the street door, that had ad¬ 
mitted everybody all day from the leading mer¬ 
chants, workers, widows, all the way down to the 
fat woman who kept the fruit stand, opened 
again. A young girl came in. It was as if spring 
and snow and sweetness had entered. There was 

23 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


so much whiteness and coolness in the presence 
she made. A mere hint of far-off blue skies, and 
as if Nature had granted her the flowers she wore 
on this hat. She passed the teller’s window, also 
the cashier’s window. She looked neither to the 
right nor the left. The white scallop in the pink 
upper lip was pressed primly, holding it, like a 
word she would not say, upon the round pink 
under lip. She came directly to the bookkeeper’s 
window, faced it, stared at him and waited. 

When she entered he had made three steps 
backward, which brought him to the wall behind 
him. He was conscious of being without his coat. 
But if you are a man in a bank you are not sup¬ 
posed to scamper out of sight like a lady in 
negligee, if some one comes to call. You stood 
your ground with dignity, no matter how you 
looked. He stood his; he did not move a muscle. 
He may have breathed, but if so it was no more 
than a secret breath merely to sustain life. Their 
eyes met; his filled with the fire of an amaze¬ 
ment, hers calm and speechless. She regarded 
him as one regards a picture on the wall. 

This was all that happened, lasting no longer 
than the instant of time required for the book¬ 
keeper to look up, see her and slide himself with 
one step like a little, thin-necked, bald-headed, 

24 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


stooped-shouldered fact before the window, blot¬ 
ting out the vision of her. 

Young Cutter heard her murmur something, 
saw the bookkeeper draw a pass book from a stack 
of these dingy records and slide it beneath the 
wicket of the window. 

He heard her say “thank you” in a faint, soft, 
bell-like voice. Then she turned and went out. 

He stared about him. How was this? He ex¬ 
pected a wave of excitement to mark her passing, 
as people exclaim at the sight of something in¬ 
effable. Had no one seen her but himself? Ap¬ 
parently not. Every man in there was working 
with his usual air of absorption. For another in¬ 
stant he stood free, exalted, his eyes filled with 
the explosive brightness of a great emotion. Then 
it faded into self-consciousness, a downward look 
as he sneaked back to his machine, hoping that he 
had not been observed. 

This is the only kind of modesty of which men 
are capable. If one of them went out with this 
look of neighing valor on his face he would be 
arrested, of course, because it is such a perfectly 
scandalous expression. But if a maid walks 
abroad with love published in her eyes and on her 
very lips, you are moved to reverence, because 
it is a sort of piety which seems to sanctify her. 

25 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

He bent lower over his task, shot the lever 
down with a bang, struck the pedal harshly and 
rhythmically—made a noise, implying that he 
was and had been, without interruption, wholly 
engrossed with this business. 

“Remember her, George?” came his father’s 
voice like a shot out of a clear sky. 

“Who?” asked George, instantly on his guard. 

“The girl that came in just now.” 

“I didn’t notice. Who was she?” 

“Helen Adams.” 

“Never should have recognized her.” This 
was the truth. He had recognized only loveli¬ 
ness, not the maiden name of it. / 

“Last time you saw her she was a long-legged, 
saucer-faced youngster, wearing her hair plaited 
and tied with a blue ribbon, I reckon.” 

“That’s the way I remember little Helen,” 
George admitted, grinning. 

“Two years make a lot of difference in a girl 
of that age. Pretty, ain’t she?” 

The young man did not answer. He was sud¬ 
denly and unaccountably annoyed. When your 
whole mind is concentrated on a girl, she becomes 
your religion and you do not care to enter into 
a doctrinal discussion of this religion with an¬ 
other man, not even your old, gray-haired father, 

26 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


because she has become the sacred silence of your 
own soul, no matter what or who she was yes¬ 
terday, nor even if you never had so much as a 
twinge of soul until this moment. You practi¬ 
cally invent your soul then and there out of the 
joy and daylight of your youth, because it is the 
only place suitable for such a creature to occupy. 
Let Moses and the prophets stand aside! This is 
your pagan period of vestal virgins; not that you 
know it, but it is. 

Mr. Cutter stood up, produced a heavy gold 
watch, studied the face of it, grinned, jerked his 
coat down and around, buttoned one button of it 
by the hardest work and reached for his hat. 
“Well, George, I guess you'll finish before you 
quit," he said. 

This was a hint. The son took it. “All right, 
sir. I’ll be along about midnight," he answered 
good-naturedly, at the same time making a wry 
face. 

“Oh, you’ll probably get in before suppertime. 
The work will come easier in a day or two," the 
father retorted as he stalked out. 

He was scarcely out of sight before the cashier, 
teller and bookkeeper followed in quick proces¬ 
sion. 

George was now alone. He changed his scene 

27 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


instantly, as most people do when they are left 
alone. He straightened up, started smoking, 
moved directly into the current of the electric 
fan, folded his arms and thought profoundly, his 
head lifted, eyes fixed in a noble gaze, as if on 
no particular object; a heroic figure, blowing vol¬ 
umes of smoke through his nose. 

What a young man thinks in this mood may be 
imagined, but it never can be known. And the 
writer does not live with the wisdom or grace to 
translate his deep, singing dumbness into words. 

Presently he went back to his task, working 
now with swiftness and concentration, as if his 
whole future depended upon finishing what he 
was doing in the shortest possible time. He fin¬ 
ished in thirty minutes, disappeared into the rear 
of the bank and reappeared five minutes later 
through the side door. He was brushed, groomed 
and freshened to the last degree of elegance. His 
homespun fitted him with an air. He stepped 
with a long, prideful stride—and got no farther 
than the corner of the next street. Here he halted, 
looking all possible ways at once—nobody in 
sight; plenty of people, you understand, but not * 
the girl. He had seen her pass this corner. 

He waited. Wherever she had gone, she should 

28 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

be returning by this time. This one and that one 
hailed him as they went by. A fellow he knew 
stopped and engaged him in conversation. He 
was annoyed. Suppose the girl appeared, how 
was he to escape from this ass 4 ? The ass finally 
took in the situation and moved on, looking back 
as he turned the next corner. 

George looked at his watch—after five! She 
certainly should be going home by this time. 
Everybody in sight was on his way home. Sup¬ 
pose he had missed her; suppose she had gone 
around the other way! Jumping cats, what a 
fool he had been, wasting time here! He started 
off, walking rapidly but still with that magnifi¬ 
cent, stiff-legged strut. 

Some one came alongside, caught his arm and 
whirled him half around. “Where you going in 
such a hurry, Cutter?” 

This was Charley Harman, a friend, but this 
was no time for friends to be butting in. 

“Home,” said George briefly, by way of im¬ 
plying that he was not inviting company home 
with him. 

“So am I, but I never walk fast when I’m go¬ 
ing home. Let’s get a drink in here”; halting as 
they came opposite a drug store. 

29 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

“Take one for me,” Cutter said with a short 
laugh and moved on so hurriedly that Harman 
took the hint. 

Nothing else happened until he reached the 
place where Wiggs Street opened on the square. 
He stared down the flower-blooming vista of this 
street. He could see men watering their front 
yards and the women watering their flowers. He 
could hear the boom of his father’s voice half a 
block down, talking to some one in the next yard. 
He saw Mrs. Adams sitting, large and amorphous, 
in a rocking-chair on her front porch. He sup¬ 
posed that she also was waiting for Helen. 

Then he saw her approaching from the other 
end of the street, not distant, but divided from 
him by the eyes of all these people sitting and 
puttering around in their front yards. He 
thought she walked as if she were sad or good or 
something. And he had this consolation, as she 
Anally turned in and went up the steps of the 
Adams’ cottage, he was sure that she had seen him. 
He was sure that their eyes had met. He also ob¬ 
served when he came down into the street to his 
own home that she had not stopped on the porch 
with her mother, but had gone directly inside. 


30 


CHAPTER III 


When you are in love, everything is important 
and everything is secret. You become a consum¬ 
mate actor and liar in vain, because the whole 
world knows your secret almost as soon as you do. 

That evening at the dinner table, George was 
so gay, so full of himself, so ready to laugh and 
make a joke that Mrs. Cutter was beside herself 
with pride and happiness. 

“He is such a good boy, so unconscious of his 
good looks and his intellect,” she told Mr. Cutter 
when they were alone together after dinner. 

“Intellect!” said Mr. Cutter in that tone of 
voice. 

“Yes; you know how smart he is; but he is not 
the least conceited, just light-hearted and happy 
as he should be at his age. I say it shows he is 
a good boy.” 

“Where is he now?” Mr. Cutter wanted to 
know. 

The question appeared to Mrs. Cutter to be 
irrelevant. She said she did not know; why? 

“Nothing,” answered her husband. 

31 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


She said he was around somewhere, probably 
in his room. She went to the bottom of the stairs. 
“Georgie!” she called. 

No answer. Well, then he must be out front 
somewhere, and went to prove that he was. But 
she could not find him. Then she came back and 
wanted to know of Mr. Cutter what difference 
did it make, if they did not know where he was*? 
George was no longer a child. Couldn’t he trust 
his own son*? 

Oh, yes; in reason he could and did trust him. 
“But I’ll tell you one thing, Maggie,” he added, 
laying aside his paper and looking her squarely in 
the face, “George should get married.” 

“Married; just as he is ready to enjoy his youth 
and not even out of the university yet—and only 
twenty-one. What do you mean?” she demanded 
indignantly. 

“That a blaze-faced horse and a red-headed 
man are both vain things for safety,” he retorted. 

“Do you know anything wrong about George ?” 
she demanded, after a gasping pause. 

“No.” 

“A single thing?” 

“Not a single thing. I was merely stating a 
natural fact.” 

She had risen, a little, slim, fiery-eyed woman. 

32 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


She drew herself up. He watched her ascend. 
He refused to quail beneath the spark in her 
eye. 

“Mr. Cutter,” she began ominously, because she 
gave him this title only when she was ominous, 
“when you married me I had red hair. My hair 
is still red.” 

“Yes, my dear; but you were a girl. I said a 
man. I meant a young man with red hair. There 
is all the latitudes and longitudes in life between 
the one and the other. If you were a red-haired 
young man, I should think twice before I’d give a 
daughter of mine in marriage to you. But you 
will recall that I had black hair,” he concluded, 
laughing. 

A father who would traduce his own son for 
inheriting hair the color of his mother’s and with¬ 
out cause—well, she could not understand such a 
father. Whereupon she left the room in high 
dudgeon, but really to go and look for this son. 
Her confidence in him had not been shaken, but 
she was anxious without reason, which is the keen¬ 
est anxiety from which women suffer. 

She found him pacing back and forth in the 
vegetable garden, arms folded, face lifted like a 
yowling puppy’s to the moon; not that this simile 
occurred to her. He appeared to her a potentially 

33 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

great man, breathing his thoughts in this quiet 
place. 

He was annoyed at this interruption. Was he 
never to have a moment alone to think this thing 
out! He really thought he was thinking, you 
understand, when he was only visualizing a girl 
in a white dress, with a blue sash, blue eyes and 
blue cornflowers on her hat; blue was the most 
entrancing color in the world, and so on and so 
forth. He was trying to imagine what she would 
say if she said anything, when he saw his mother 
approaching. He repressed his impatience. They 
walked together between the bald-headed cab¬ 
bage and the young, curled-up, green lettuce. She 
thought she was sharing his thoughts. Something 
had been said about his experiences in the bank. 
Many a mother and some fathers would leap with 
amazement, if s they really knew the thoughts they 
do not share with their sons and daughters at such 
times. 

Still this was an innocent young man, as men 
go, a good son, as sons are reckoned. He was 
well within his rights to be pursuing his love 
fancies. And for a long period of this time he 
remained in a state of legal innocence of which 
any man or husband might boast. Mrs. Cutter 
was entirely justified in despising the opinion Mr. 

34 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Cutter had given that night of this excellent 
young man. Sometimes more than twenty years 
are required to fulfill a paternal prophecy. 

Mrs. Adams remained seated on the porch. 
She supposed Helen had gone to her room to take 
off her hat and would return presently. It was 
much cooler out here, and the street was inter¬ 
esting at this hour of the late afternoon, like 
watching a very good human play, where all the 
characters are decent. 

She saw Mrs. Shaw bustling in and out, herd¬ 
ing her numerous family. This meant that they 
were having early supper, probably cold supper, 
and that they would go to the band concert after¬ 
wards. The Shaws spent a good deal on amuse¬ 
ments. She hoped they could afford it. 

There was Mr. Flitch sitting alone on his front 
porch, with his heels cocked up on the banister. 
This meant that he was in a state of rebellion, be¬ 
cause he never stuck his feet on to this immacu¬ 
lately white banister if he was in a proper frame 
of mind. It also meant that Mrs. Flitch had her 
feelings hurt again and was probably in her room 
suffering from this ailment. She had heard that 
the Flitches did not get on well together. In her 
opinion this was Ella Flitch’s fault. You could 
not live diagonally across the street from a wasp- 

35 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ish woman and belong to the same missionary so¬ 
ciety without knowing that she was waspish. 

I am writing this into the record—it was no 
part of Mrs. Adams’ reflections—that if you are 
a woman you always blame the wife for her mari¬ 
tal unhappiness; if you are a man you know, of 
course, that the husband is at fault, even if you 
listen cordially to your own wife when she is 
taking the contrary view. 

Mrs. Adams turned her neat, little, gray head 
slowly, surreptitiously and took a swift glance up 
the street at the Cutter residence. Then she 
turned it back again. But she had read all the 
news up there to be seen with the naked eye, as¬ 
sisted by powerful spectacles. Mr. and Mrs. 
Cutter were seated comfortably in their respective 
porch chairs. And George was out in the swing, 
elegantly folded into a sitting posture where he 
commanded a view of her front porch. If you are 
the mother of a daughter, you notice such little 
circumstances whether they mean anything or not, 
because they may be very significant. 

The sight of this young man sentinel reminded 
her of something. Where was Helen? What 
was she doing so long inside? She arose at once 
and went in to see about this. 

“Helen!” she called from the hall. 

36 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

No answer. 

She walked heavily to the closed bedroom door 
and knocked authoritatively. 

No answer. Not a sound. 

“Helen, are you in there ? 55 

“Yes, mother ,’ 5 came the faint reply. 

“What are you doing ? 55 

“Nothing , 55 in a wailing, muffled voice, as if 
this person who was doing “nothing 55 was being 
smothered. 

Mrs. Cutter thrust the door open and went in. 
She was astounded. Her daughter lay face down¬ 
ward across the bed, with her arms wound above 
her head in two beautifully curved lines of mute 
despair. Two pretty legs extended stiffly beyond 
the uttermost that skirts could do to cover them. 
One slippered foot worked slowly as you move a 
foot in pain, and at quick intervals the slender 
form rose and fell convulsively to the passionate 
rhythm of sobs. 

“What on earth is the matter ? 55 the mother 
exclaimed. 

“Nothing . 55 

“Are you ill ? 55 

“No . 55 

“Has anything happened ? 55 

“Not a thing . 55 


37 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Why are you crying?” 

“I don’t know. Oh, mother, I just want to be 
left alone”—followed by another paroxysm of 
weeping. 

Mrs. Adams waited grimly until the distressing 
convulsions of the slender young body subsided. 
Then she began again: “Well, you can’t be left 
in this fix. Turn over, Helen. You are muss¬ 
ing your dress.” 

The girl turned obediently, her face poign¬ 
antly, sweetly pink, very sad. Her eyes bright 
with tears like violets after a summer rain. The 
flush was ominous. Mrs. Adams had never seen 
Helen this color before, never in her life. She 
bent and laid a palm on the girl’s brow—warm, 
but moist; certainly not feverish. 

She stood regarding her daughter thoughtfully. 
Then she sat down on the side of the bed, took 
one of Helen’s hands in her own harsher, stronger 
hand, where it lay like a plucked lily, wilted, icy 
cold. She stroked it gently. Her face softened, 
her eyes brooded, as if through a mist she beheld 
a memory of herself long ago, which suddenly 
freshened and brightened into the figure of the 
girl she had been. 

Mothers are omniscient. They have little 
paths back and forth through their years by which 

38 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

the ghosts of them can always find you, wherever 
you are. Not another word was spoken for a 
long time between these two; the younger, over¬ 
come by the future, holding the unsolved, longed- 
for mystery of love; the other, overcome by the 
past, which held for her the dreadful reality of 
love. Neither had or could escape. They accom¬ 
plished a wordless sympathy on this basis. 

Mrs. Adams’ reflections were strangely mixed, 
what with that sundown feeling she had of her 
own youth and the anxieties of a mother grow¬ 
ing stronger every moment. She would like to 
know, for example, if Helen had seen George 
Cutter. Had she gone by the bank for the pass 
book*? But even when she caught sight of this 
book lying on the dresser, with the ends of many 
checks sticking out of it, she did not put the ques¬ 
tion. Love is a wound too painful to be dressed 
with the tenderest words when it is first made, 
much less scraped with a question. 

She was, over and above her emotions as a 
woman and a mother, fairly well satisfied with 
the situation. She inferred that George and 
Helen had had some sort of passage at arms. 
And she did not suppose that any man in or 
out of his senses could actually resist for long a 
girl of Helen’s soft charm. Mothers have their 

39 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


pride, you understand. This one was shrewd, 
eminently practical. You must be, to deal with 
youth at this stage. 

The room was flooded with the golden efful¬ 
gence of a summer twilight when at last she arose, 
moved gently toward the door, picking up the 
bank book as she passed the dresser and thrusting 
it into her pocket. “Helen, 5 ’ she said from the 
doorway, “it is the heat. This has been a very 
warm day. You will be better presently . 55 

“Yes, mother, I think it was the heat; and I 
do feel better , 55 the girl answered faintly. 

“There is ice tea and chicken salad for supper ,’ 5 
Mrs. Adams suggested. 

“I don’t think I care for anything.” 

“Well, later then. I’ll leave the tea and your 
salad on the ice,” the mother said, going out and 
closing the door. 


40 


CHAPTER IV 


This was the beginning of that affair. Helen 
remembered the day well. A woman never for¬ 
gets the sky and the weather of the day upon 
which love called her forth to the vicissitudes of 
love. But as things turned out, I doubt if she 
would mention that day now, as other women do 
when the bloom of their years has past. But at 
the best a courtship is strangely ephemeral, if 
you consider the consequences. It is like fugitive 
verses published to-day, gone to-morrow, like the 
fragrance of flowers blown upon a wind that 
passes and never returns. So much of it cannot 
be made into words; a glance of the eye, quick 
as light, revealing all; but who can translate the 
look or the long silences between lovers*? Nature 
knows her business. The whole world, the heav¬ 
ens and the earth and the fullness thereof is an 
incantation made to ensnare lovers to her pur¬ 
pose. And not a word grows anywhere to betray 
this charm. You may be strong or weak, wise or 
simple, cynical, disillusioned, protected with all 
the knowledge of men, but there is no escape. 
Nature gets you at last; on honor or dishonor you 

41 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


must pay your debt to her in love. When you 
are done, nothing remains but your dust, a hand¬ 
ful of something with which to fertilize love again 
—a little retail economy Nature makes in her 
procreating plans. 

The next day after this first day was a Sab¬ 
bath. I do not believe in predestination, doc- 
trinally speaking. The meaning of that term, I 
should say, was strictly human, and is derived 
from our short-winded conception of time, which 
does not exist either, except in the mortal sense. 
But by some prearranged prudence of Providence, 
by which all things come to pass whether we will 
or no, including the most intimate and personal 
things, the Cutters attended the same church that 
the remaining mother and daughter of the Adams 
family attended. It was a very good little 
church, glistening white within, shining white 
without, like an enameled bathtub with a roof 
and a steeple. I will not be sure, but my impres¬ 
sion is that the denomination was Baptist. In 
any case, Helen Adams belonged to the choir. 

On this Sunday morning she sang a solo, Jeru¬ 
salem the Golden. She had a fresh young voice, 
roomy and soft at the bottom, triumphantly high 
and keen at the top. She wore white as usual 
and little fluttering skylines of blue tied in a bow 

42 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

as usual. When she stood up to sing she lifted 
her eyes as if these eyes and this face were the 
words of a young morning prayer; she let go her 
beautifully crimped upper lip, opened her mouth 
as if this mouth were a rose bursting into bloom 
—and sang. I do not know if she sang well, hav¬ 
ing no skill in these matters; but it is certain that 
she looked like an angel. What I mean is that if 
you had no visual acquaintance with angels, you 
would have known at once that this was the very 
image of the way an angel should look. 

The congregation listened with the peaceful 
apathy peculiar to every small town congrega¬ 
tion, when it is being mulled in the music of a 
hymn or the Word. This made the one excep¬ 
tion the more noticeable. 

George William Cutter, Junior, looked and 
listened with a fervor which far surpassed any¬ 
thing that mere piety could do for a young man’s 
praying countenance. Fortunately he was seated 
far back in the publican and sinner section of 
the church. Thus he escaped the sophisticated 
attention of the elder saints toward the front. 
Never had he seen anything so lovely as this girl, 
the high look she had with the notes of this hymn, 
trembling as they came from her round, white 
throat or flaring into a perfect ecstasy of joy. 

43 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


When she had finally caroled out and sat down, 
he whispered under his breath, “Lord! Lord!” 
although he was not a religious man and meant 
nothing of the sort by this exclamation. 

The moment the benediction was pronounced, 
he stepped briskly from his place in that sparsely 
settled part of the church, met the slow-moving 
tattling tide of the congregation coming out as he 
hurried down the aisle like a good swimmer in 
sluggish waters until he reached Helen standing 
in the rear ranks with her mother. 

He bowed to Mrs. Adams. He hoped she re¬ 
membered him—George Cutter, extending his 
hand. 

Oh, yes; she remembered him, she said mildly. 
No excitement in her mind over the recollection 
either I Did he think he had improved that 
much? She let him know that so far as she was 
concerned he was the same little George Cutter 
who used to live across the street and sometimes 
threw stones at her chickens. 

No matter if you are a very handsome young 
man, with athletic laurels hanging to your college 
coat tails, you cannot make a deep or flattering 
impression on a middle-aged woman who has a 
practical, computing mind and knows the ro¬ 
mantic value of her beautiful daughter. If Helen 

44 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


had been homely, a little, starched mouse of a 
girl, who could not sing Jerusalem the Golden or 
anything else, she would have received George’s 
salutations more cordially. As it was, she did 
not have to be more than invincibly polite. All 
this she let him know with a flat look of her calm 
blue eye. 

It was a waste of excellent maternal diplomacy 
so far as he was concerned. He had already 
turned to Helen. He was almost speechless from 
having so much to say. She was entirely so for 
a moment. Then she gave him her hand and 
managed to say, “Howdy do, George,” in a 
tone a girl uses when the man owes her an 
apology. 

This accusative welcome dashed him. No 
smile! When he was himself the very pedestal 
of a smile. Good heavens, what had he done? 
He was conscious of being innocent; yet he felt 
guilty. 

Mrs. Adams paid no more attention to them. 
She had gone on, caught up with the Flitches and 
passed out. This was the only permission he re¬ 
ceived that he might, if he could, walk with 
Helen. 

The girl’s inclemency stirred him as frosty 
weather stimulates energy. So they followed. I 

45 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


doubt if they were aware themselves that the dis¬ 
tance lengthened between them and other groups 
of this congregation, which divided and dwindled 
at every street corner. Lovers are recognized on 
sight, long before they know themselves to be 
lovers. People make room for their privacy in 
public places. These two had a whole block to 
themselves by the time they entered Wiggs 
Street. Mrs. Adams had already disappeared in 
her house. The broad back of Mr. Cutter and 
the slim back of little Mrs. Cutter were visible 
for a moment before they also faded through the 
doorway of the Cutter residence. 

Only the Flitches stood en masse on their 
spider-legged veranda, their eyes glued upon these 
two stragglers, coming slowly down the sunlit 
street. The Flitches were good people, of the 
round-eyed breed. They had a candid, perpetu¬ 
ally interrogative curiosity which nothing could 
satisfy. You know the kind. It is never you, 
but the family that lives across the street from 
you, or in the next house with thin eyelid curtains 
over their windows through which they are per¬ 
petually regarding you, striving after omniscience 
about you and your affairs. 

Helen had admitted that it was a “nice day” 
when he said it was, as they came out of the 

46 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

church and faced the fair brow of this June sab¬ 
bath. 

He had told her how much he enjoyed her solo. 
It was wonderful. 

She merely replied that she “liked to sing.” 

He was still conscious of being in the arctic 
region of her regard and cast about, with a lover’s 
distracted compass, to discover the way out. 
“Weren’t you in the bank yesterday afternoon*?” 
he asked suddenly. 

“Yes,” she answered coldly after a slight pause; 
“I was about to speak to you, but you did not 
recognize me,” she added. 

“It is the truth. I did not,” he admitted 
quickly and waited. He could not be sure she 
got it, the compliment implied. He remembered 
her as merely sensible, not smart. “You have 
changed, grown or something,” he resumed. “I 
couldn’t be expected to know you. All the other 
girls here look just as they did when I left here 
two years ago. But you don’t; you are amaz¬ 
ingly different. How did you do it*?” he ex¬ 
claimed, regarding her with charmed amazement. 

He saw her take it, caught the glance she gave 
him one instant before she dropped it. The faint¬ 
est smile sweetened the corners of her mouth. He 
got that too. 


47 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


If only he had known of the tears she had shed 
after the visit to the bank, what a triumph! 
Fortunately, men do not know what maidens con¬ 
fess with tears to their pillows. If they did it 
would change many a courtship to one kind or 
another of ruthless tyranny. 

We who study love as if it were a medicine or 
a disease sometimes speak of “love at first sight,” 
as if this were an unusual seizure. But love is 
always love at first sight. You may know this 
man or he may know you for years without get¬ 
ting that angle of vision; but if you ever do, it 
is as if you had never really seen him before. 
In a moment you have endowed him with attri¬ 
butes his Maker would never have squandered 
on a man of that quality. This is what love is, 
the conferring of virtues and qualities upon the 
object of your awakened emotion like so many 
degrees. He may be a drug clerk, or a chicken- 
breasted, fat man, or a swank young rascal, but 
from that moment when love gets sight of him 
he is a fellow of the royal society of heroes, and 
you may be so bemused you live a lifetime with 
him, always conferring more degrees to keep him 
tenderly concealed from your clearer vision. Or 
it may happen in a year or twenty years the scales 
fall from your eyes. Then love becomes a serv- 

48 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ant, and life a tragedy. But there is nothing in 
the Scriptures against such a servant or such a 
life. Rather, I should say the Scriptures make 
wide and permanent provisions for this deflation 
in the marital relation. 


49 


CHAPTER V 


From this day George Cutter spent his spare 
time in and about the Adams cottage. You might 
have inferred that he was a homeless man. He 
accompanied Helen to such entertainments as 
society consisted of in Shannon, chiefly picnics 
and Ashing excursions at this season of the year. 
He was by nature an importunate lover, and he 
was in love. He did not ask himself whether 
Helen would make a suitable wife for such a man 
as he was, and would become. He did not know 
what kind of man he was. He only knew that 
he wanted this girl, and that no other man should 
have her. 

The decision was natural, entirely creditable. 
But the approach must be made. So far as he 
was concerned he was ready to propose to Helen 
at once; girls, however, were squeamish in mat¬ 
ters of love. His instinct warned him that he 
might lose by an immediate declaration. He 
spent the time agreeably displaying his wares. 
He was a university man. He had a smattering 
of ideas, caught carelesssly and selected from the 
mouthings of this professor and that. He had 

50 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


no doubt that he could make an impression. 
Helen was village born, village bred. It was 
well enough to startle her into a profound ad¬ 
miration. Nothing subdued and impressed a 
woman like brains. He not only had brains, he 
had views. 

Bear in mind this was twenty years ago. The 
muckrakers were still mucking in the best maga¬ 
zines. The “social conscience,” a favorite phrase 
at the time, had passed the period of gestation, 
and had become a sentimental conviction claimed 
by the best people. Old patriarchal Russian 
anarchists with pink whiskers, spewed out of 
Russia, were pouring into this country, the shade 
of their whiskers due entirely to the action of the 
salt air during the voyage over on the dye used 
upon these whiskers by way of disguise until they 
were safe in a clean land. They brought their 
doctrines with them. They created a market for 
socialism, radicalism and communism. 

There was no provision then or even now at 
Ellis Island to exclude these lepers of decaying 
civilization afflicted with the most insidious social 
diseases of the mind. They had a fine time work¬ 
ing up conditions which were presently to result 
in mental, moral and social unrest, strikes and the 
perversions of all sound doctrines. The universi- 

51 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

ties in particular received these doctrines gladly 
—mere theories, so far as the deans and doctors 
were concerned, upon which they performed in¬ 
tellectual stunts before their classes; trapeze work, 
nothing more. At that time the most unscrupu¬ 
lous men in this nation were these teachers of 
youth. Now they may name their converts by 
the millions; but then the “young gentlemen” who 
listened had not got a working use of this dia¬ 
blerie. They talked of liberty as if liberty was 
license by way of appearing swank intellectually. 

George had come home that summer fresh cut 
from the classroom of a certain professor who held 
advanced views on what men were really entitled 
to in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. 

One evening he was seated beside Helen on a 
bench beneath an arbor covered with vines of 
trailing clematis. They had been there a long 
time. Nothing had happened, to put it exactly 
as Helen inwardly interpreted the situation. 
Nothing could happen yet, to put it according to 
George’s decision. He had been home barely two 
weeks. Helen impressed him as being so in¬ 
effably innocent, so remote from his passion that 
it would be almost an insult to make love to her. 
Love enjoined silence like the benediction in a 
church. 


52 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

They sat beneath the star-white clematis blos¬ 
soms, confounded with each other. Helen waited. 
If only he would say something that would ease 
her of this pain, this humiliation of feeling as 
she did toward a man who might regard her 
merely as a friend! She thought he might be 
interested in her; he had been there almost every 
evening since his return. But she did not know. 
What suspense lovers bear when the whole titter¬ 
ing world knows the truth they dare not believe. 

George started to smoke, tilted his chin up, ex¬ 
pelled a twin bugle of smoke from his nostrils, 
narrowed his eyes and stared into the immensity 
of the night. He was very handsome posed like 
this, and knew it. 

Men are much more presumptuously vain than 
women. They can be vain with no preparation, 
in their shirt sleeves, with a three days’ stubble 
of beard on their faces and no hair at all on their 
heads. Their vanity seems to be a sort of rooster- 
tail instinct, with which they have been endowed 
so that they may do the work of the world and 
waste no time primping. It is an illusion, of 
course, this physical egotism, but the queer thing 
is that it is an illusion of them shared by most 
women. So they get away with it. And few of 
them ever know how purposefully and sardoni- 

53 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

cally they are afflicted by Nature with homeli¬ 
ness. 

On the other hand, when you get down to the 
psychological facts, I doubt if women are vain 
at all. They may be beautiful, but even at that 
they have so little confidence in their beauty that 
the last one of them must finance her assurance 
with all the make-believe art of loveliness. I 
suppose she has discovered that it is not beauty 
that wins the lover, but it is the deliberate proc¬ 
lamation she thus makes to him of her charms. 
And this is no illusion. For the history of that 
grotesque sex is that the average man will pass 
a naturally beautiful woman every time to pay 
his court to a painted, powdered and puffed 
woman who is not nearly so good-looking, if you 
washed her face and buttoned her up to the neck¬ 
line of modesty. 

Here was Helen, for example, seated beside this 
young man, all whiteness and sweetness, eyes so 
blue that even in this moonlit darkness they 
showed like sunlit skies, lips pink, parted like the 
petals of a rose, teeth like pearls glistening be¬ 
tween—the very emblem of loveliness; and yet 
she was in an anguish of uncertainty, lest he did 
not and never would care for her. I don’t know 
—this may be one of the scurvy tricks Nature 

54 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


plays on women to keep them humble. If so, it is 
not the only one. I admire the achievements and 
beauties of Nature as much as any one, but I must 
say from first to last her methods appear to me 
unscrupulous. 

The silence had grown oppressive. Helen made 
some slight movement. She probably clasped her 
hands and squeezed her patience. It was hard to 
be omitted so long from his thoughts. The rustle 
she made, faint as it was, recalled him, as he let 
her know with a glance. 

“I was just thinking, Helen, what a sorry little 
runt of a town this is,” he said, lifting his chin a 
trifle higher over the little runt of a town. 

There was a slight pause. You must have a 
moment in which to adjust yourself to the in¬ 
credible, especially when you have not been think¬ 
ing about anything so far removed. 

“Shannon*?” she asked in an exclamatory 
tone. 

“Yes; it is. You can’t imagine how it looks to 
me after two years away from it, how it compares 
with the big places I have seen—dried up, sun¬ 
baked, no atmosphere, no culture.” 

She said nothing. What can you say when you 
hear a man blaspheming the very cradle where 
he was rocked in infancy. Besides, the contempt 

55 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


seemed to include her. She was a part of it, and 
she loved it. 

“I saw a handsome plant of some sort bloom¬ 
ing in a tin bucket on Mrs. Flitch’s front porch 
the other day. That’s what I mean,” he went on. 

“But what do you mean 4 ?” she asked, regarding 
him vaguely. 

“Well, the bucket was tinware, as I said, and 
published on it, still in red letters, was the red 
label of a superior shortening.” He laughed. 

“She is so fond of flowers,” Helen expounded 
gravely. 

His eyes snickered at her. “But the bucket,” 
he exclaimed, “the tin bucket, the old tin bucket 
with the red label—with a gardenia blooming in 
it. Naive, I’ll admit, but about as appropriate 
as sticking an ostrich plume over the kitchen 
sink.” 

Helen made a hasty mental inventory of the 
Adams flower pots and thanked heaven they were 
correct. 

“The people here do not think; they merely 
gossip,” he went on. “They have no ideas, no 
purely mental conceptions. They do not know 
what is going on in the mind of the world, how 
men’s views of life are changing and broaden- 
ing.” 


56 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

She did not follow him, but she felt the wind 
of the world beneath her wing. 

“Two years here made no difference. You 
don’t grow. You don’t develop. But away in a 
university, where your business is to get what’s 
going and learn to think, two years change a 
man. I am a stranger here now. My own father 
and mother do not know me.” 

“Oh, George, yes, they do!” she exclaimed con¬ 
solingly. 

Then she caught his eye and perceived that he 
was in no need of consolation. He was boasting, 
prouder than otherwise of being this stranger.' 
“It’s a fact; they make me feel like a whited 
sepulcher,” he complained. 

“But you don’t,” she exclaimed loyally, but 
really in great trepidation lest he might be this 
awful thing. 

“Of course not,” he returned, pleased to have 
excited her anxiety. “But what would my father 
think if he knew I am interested in socialism, that 
my best friends in the university are radicals^” 

She was not competent to express an opinion. 
She was not skilled in politics. 

“And what would my mother think if she knew 
that I no longer accept the Scriptures literally as 
she does, as you all do in this town; that I know 

57 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

the Bible to be fragments of history and tradition, 
much of it mythical, the priestly literature of the 
Jews, gathered from dreams and hearsay, and in¬ 
terpreted to control the lives and liberties of 
men.” 

“Oh, George! you must not say such things. 
You are a member of the church. I remember 
the Sunday morning when you were baptized.” 

“A public bath! And there is no ‘the Church,’ 
Helen; did you know that—unless it’s the world; 
that’s the big church,” said this grand young man, 
delivered from the faith of his fathers. 

This was awful. She stared at him through 
tears, but not with any shrinking; rather her heart 
yearned toward him. There is no doubt about 
this—all women, however young, have wings and 
a sort of clucking mind, spiritually speaking. 

He was moved by the sight of these tears to a 
loftier, transient mood of himself. He turned so 
as to face her, seized her hand, bent his brows 
upon her in a strained, long look. It was power¬ 
ful, this gaze. She trembled. Her hand became 
icy in his hot palm. He tightened his clasp 
upon it. 

“Listen, Helen,” in the deep bass tones of a 
terrific emotion, “I wish you to know me as I am. 

58 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


I would not take advantage of a girl like you. 
I will keep nothing from you. It is necessary if 
—if my hopes are realized.” He left her in this 
suspense while he bowed his head and struggled 
to stem his tide. “I am not a good man,” he 
began. It was the opening sentence of a procla¬ 
mation, not a confession, as if he had said: “I have 
a cloven foot and am proud of it.” “But I have 
my convictions, and no man on God’s green earth 
is more faithful to his convictions.” 

She was holding her breath, only letting it out 
when she could hold it no longer in a soft sigh, 
and taking in another for the next sigh. If you 
are doing it for exercise you call it “deep breath¬ 
ing.” 

“And I have my ideals,” he added impressively. 

She was relieved. If he was not an entirely 
good man, he could not be a bad one; he had “con¬ 
victions” and he had “ideals.” What more could 
she ask 4 ? 

“For example, I believe in the freedom of 
love,” he announced, and waited for this shock¬ 
ing piece of news to take effect. 

The effect was marvelous. Her cheeks bloomed 
scarlet. Nature flung a wreath of palest pink 
upon her forehead—only for an instant; then this 

59 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

aurora of love’s emotion faded. “I am afraid I 
don’t know much about love,” she said faintly, 
lowering her eyes before his gaze. 

He leaned back, gratified. He had her secret; 
but she had not got his meaning. The dear little 
innocent! He was tempted to kiss her. 

This was really the case. She had not recog¬ 
nized the phrase. There was no use for it in 
Shannon. The worst thing she had ever heard 
was Sammy Duncan swearing at the cat. Her 
reading had been sternly censored. Mrs. Adams 
took no morning paper, “on account of Helen”; 
a magazine, yes; and there were Scott’s novels. 
These had been the girl’s text books of love. She 
had never even read the Song of Solomon. Mrs. 
Adams had forbidden her this richer scriptural 
food. “You won’t understand it,” the mother 
had said. And Helen obediently skipped it when 
she turned the pages of her Bible. She had 
secretly wondered why Solomon was in the Bible 
anyway. He was not a proper person, if one 
believed the preacher, and one must do that. 
Neither was David all he should have been by all 
accounts. But here she veered again and merely 
learned her Psalms, making no inquiries into the 
author’s private life, which was very ladylike of 
her. In short, brought up according to a stand- 

60 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

ard of innocence which amounted to a deformity, 
at this moment she was stripped of every weapon 
by which she might have defended herself against 
an iniquitous doctrine. 

George decided not to go too fast with his 
teaching on this subject, for he was determined 
that she should learn it and accept it. He kissed 
her hand instead and told her that she was all 
there was of love so far as he was concerned. 


61 


CHAPTER VI 


From this time their affair progressed with reel¬ 
ing swiftness. Helen assumed an air of indepen¬ 
dence, as if she had suddenly come into possession 
of a private fortune. This is ever the effect of 
riches upon the meekest of us. She was now a 
lovely young insurrection in her mother’s house. 
She had opinions and expressed them boldly in 
opposition to those of her mother. 

This had never happened before. Mrs. Adams 
was astonished, but she conformed to the natural 
order of parents. She abdicated, merely trailing 
clouds of futile protests as she descended, also 
after the manner of parents. You may manage a 
son in love by putting the financial brakes on him; 
but you can do literally nothing with a daughter 
in love, because her sense of responsibility is 
purely devotional and sentimental. She will risk 
a husband because she will not be obliged to sup¬ 
port him. This is the difference, which she may 
discover afterwards does not exist. But she 
thinks it does, which comes to the same thing. 

If you are a girl you cannot stir up any great 

62 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

issue. Helen simply made those within her reach. 
For one thing she decided to wear “pink.” 

“But blue is your color,” Mrs. Adams objected. 

“But it is not one of my principles, mother. I 
am tired of blue. I have worn it all my life as a 
rabbit wears one kind of skin. I’m human. I can 
wear any color.” 

And she did. She tried every shade of the rain¬ 
bow that summer. She was extravagant. 

“Helen, where are your economies?” Mrs. 
Adams exclaimed, as if she referred to certain 
necessary fastenings on the feminine character. 

This was a day in August, when Helen wanted 
yet another hat and frock. 

“They were never mine; they were yours, 
mother,” was the unfeeling reply. “I want the 
dress and the hat.” 

“You have had two hats this season.” 

“This one then will make three.” 

Clothes had become her obsession, a silent way 
she had of extorting admiration from George. 

“Well, if this keeps up I cannot afford to send 
you away to school this fall,” Mrs. Adams told 
her. 

“I don’t want to go away to school. I am 
tired of being just taught. I want to do my own 
learning,” Helen informed her. 

63 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


And when you consider how simple she was, 
this was a rather profound thing to say. The 
desire to chase our own knowledge is as old as 
Eve. But from then until now it has led to a 
sort of independent, sweating self-respect. We 
pay the highest price of all for it, as Helen was 
destined to learn—among other things. But I 
reckon it is worth it, if anything is worth what 
we pay for the experience by which life unfolds. 

Mrs. Adams was not crushed by this flare of 
ingratitude. She was simply confirmed in her 
suspicions. 

Meanwhile Mr. Cutter, Senior, was also con¬ 
firmed in his suspicions. Young George informed 
him early in August that he just about had enough 
of the university; he believed the wisest thing for 
him to do under the circumstances was to settle 
down to business. He did not name the circum¬ 
stances, but by this time everybody knew what 
they were, including Mr. Cutter. 

“You are of age—your own man; the decision 
rests with you,” he had said to George on this 
occasion, by way of washing his hands of any 
responsibility, after the cool-headed manner of 
fathers. 

As a matter of fact, he was very well satisfied. 
Helen Adams was a good girl; pretty; she would 

64 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


eventually inherit some property. Besides, he 
thought George had better settle early in life, else 
he might not settle at all. 

“I’ve made the decision,” said George, like a 
man in a hurry. “With the hope of getting a 
raise in salary soon,” he added, with a note of 
financial stress in his voice. 

“Oh, I guess we could manage that in case of an 
emergency,” his father replied in the same matter- 
of-fact tones. 

This is the way men deal with one another, 
even if somewhere behind the dealing deathless 
love is at stake. And it is not the way women 
deal with one another. For some reason, when 
they settle down in their years, and recover the 
powers of sight according to reason, they are ready 
to inflict death on love upon the slightest provo¬ 
cation. 

Mrs. Adams suddenly and for no apparent 
cause ceased to speak to Mrs. Cutter. And Mrs. 
Cutter with no apparent reason began to refer to 
Helen as “that Adams girl.” The mother of a 
son is always jealous. She over-estimates him; 
no matter whom he chooses for a wife, she thinks 
he might have done better. Mrs. Cutter was free 
to tell anybody, and did tell quite a number, that 
she hoped George would marry sometime; but 

65 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


when he did it was natural that she should wish 
him to choose a girl who would be equal to the 
position he could give her in the world. George 
had a future before him. He was no ordinary 
young man. By these sentiments she left you to 
infer what she thought of the “Adams girl.” If 
you ask me, I say she was correct in her opinion, 
but futilely so. 

Mrs. Adams knew that her daughter could not 
do better in a worldly way than to marry this 
young man. But when it came to the pinch, she 
forgot the world and thought anxiously of Helen. 
She was a good mother. Her instinct, sharpened 
by years of living in a world where love plays 
havoc with hopes and happiness, warned her that 
while George might settle down in business and 
become eminently successful, she doubted if he 
could be domesticated in the strictly marital vir¬ 
tues. He had too much temperament. Perhaps 
this was the way she had of admitting that Helen 
was a trifle short on temperament, even if she 
did have a good singing voice. On the other 
hand, Helen had the awful sanity of seeing things 
as they are. She had observed this walking mind 
of her daughter—no wings upon which to carry 
illusions. How would such a woman adjust her¬ 
self to a husband who might have recurrent 

66 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

periods of adolescence? She did not know. 
Therefore she regarded George with a hostile 
beam in her eye and quit speaking to Mrs. Cutter. 

When you consider the seismic disturbances 
created about them by only two lovers and mul¬ 
tiply them by all the other lovers to the utter¬ 
most parts of the earth, it is clear that there never 
can be any lasting peace in this world, though 
disarmament might be complete, and all nations 
might pass a law confirming peace and good will. 
For this is a natural disturbance beyond the diplo¬ 
macy of diplomats or of confederated congresses 
to control. It is the perpetual insurrection of life 
everlasting in the terms of love, which are never 
peaceful terms. 

Some time during this August, probably the 
latter part, Helen wore her third degree hat and 
the new frock. This hat lies now in an old trunk 
above the attic stairs in the house of Helen. I 
have seen it. A leghorn with a wide floppy brim, 
stiff, a little askew and out of shape, as you would 
be yourself if you had lain so long without so 
much as a breath of wind to stir you. There is 
a good deal of lace and ribbon on it and a wreath 
of wild roses. It looks funny, as a hat always 
does when it is long out of style, or as a love 
letter reads when you have been married twenty 

67 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


years to the man who wrote it. But with all 
there remained something gay and confident about 
this hat, like the wistful smile and sweetness of 
a girl’s face, as no doubt there remains in the 
latter those former scriptures of a valorous love. 

Helen was standing beside me when I fished 
up this little ghost of a hat and held it up in the 
warm light of the attic. “Put it on,” I exclaimed, 
not meaning to be irreverent. 

“No; oh, no,” she said, drawing back. “It 
would not become me now.” 

And it would not, any more than the love letter 
would have become the sentiments of the poor, 
tired, old, middle-aged husband who wrote it 
long ago. 

But what I set out to tell when the former 
Helen’s hat intrigued me was that she went for 
a walk with George the first time she wore it. 
Shannon at that time was such a brief little town 
that you could step out of it into the open coun¬ 
try almost at once. 

They took the river road, which was not in very 
good repute with the guardians and parents of 
Shannon, for no better reason than that it was 
sanctified by the vows of so many lovers. But 
what would you have? These lovers require pri- 

68 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


vacy and some fairness of scenery for their busi¬ 
ness. You may involuntarily publish love on a 
street corner, but you cannot declare it there. 
Your very nature revolts at the idea. So does 
society. You would be arrested for staging a love 
scene in public. Old people are not reasonable 
about this. Parental parlor-supervision has pro¬ 
duced more unhappy old maids than the homely 
features of these victims. 

When they had come some distance along the 
road, George drew her arm in his, and they went 
on in this beatific silence. “Helen,” he said, “if 
you should say anything, what would you say?” 

She looked, caught his red brown eyes smiling 
down at her and blushed. “Why, I was not going 
to say anything. I was just thinking,” she an¬ 
swered. 

“What?” he insisted. 

“How happy I am now, this moment, and—” 
she halted. 

“Well, go on.” 

“Well, just how easy it is to be happy. How 
little it really takes to make happiness,” she an¬ 
swered truthfully. 

“Just you and me,” he agreed. 

They went on again walking slowly. 

69 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“I never loved a girl before,” he informed her, 
as if they had been discussing this miracle of love 
in open speech for hours. 

She believed him. We always do believe them 
when they tell us this, because we need so much 
to keep this happiness which is founded upon the 
shifting sands of lovers. 

“And you, my beautiful one, you do love me?” 
he asked, suddenly halting and swinging her in 
front of him. 

She laid her hand upon her breast, looked at 
him through a mist of tears. “Is this love?” she 
asked, as if her hand covered leaves and blossoms 
and singing birds. 

“Of course it is,” cried her high priest, clasping 
her and kissing her. 

“Are you sure?” she gasped, with another wide 
look of joyful fear. 

“Absolutely!” 

“But, George, how can you know for certain, 
if you’ve never loved before?” 

Sometimes I think for every woman love is an 
alarm bell which rings perpetually to disturb 
her peace. It really was a staggering question she 
had asked, and George staggered like a man. 
“You know what you feel is love, don’t you?” 
he evaded. 


70 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“What I feel is terror and happiness .’ 5 

“Well, that’s love for you. This is love for 
me,” he exclaimed, kissing her again. “And to 
know that you are mine entirely, aren’t you*?” 

“Yes,” she whispered. 

The conversation of lovers in fiction rarely tal¬ 
lies with what they actually say to each other 
in real life. I have read the dialogue of many a 
brilliant courtship in a novel, but never as an 
eavesdropper or observer have I known two 
people in love to utter a single sentence which 
was sensible or that even escaped absurdity, if 
you repeated it along with other gossip you have 
to tell. And yet it is very important, this primer 
talk, these watching eyes of lovers who place the 
profoundest significance upon the most trivial act, 
or even the wavering of a glance between them. 

I merely say this in passing, as a challenge to 
the reader, who may feel a trifle let down, dis¬ 
appointed at the above record of what took place 
between George and Helen on that day. What 
I have written is the artless truth of love, not the 
fabricated philosophy of love, because there is no 
such philosophy. Love is a state of being beyond 
our academic powers to expound. It exists, it 
functions amazingly and that is all we know 
about it or ever will know about it, the passion- 

71 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

mongers and biologists to the contrary, notwith¬ 
standing. They shed no light on this phenome¬ 
non, only upon the obvious material results. They 
do in truth obscure it by gratifying your desire, 
dear reader, to indulge vicariously in something 
not suitable to the proper furnishing of your ele¬ 
gant mind. 


72 


CHAPTER VII 


The ruins of an old iron foundry stood on this 
river road. The roof had fallen in long ago. 
The walls and gables, built of rough stone alone 
remained. Creeping vines covered them. The 
sun dipping low upon the horizon shone through 
the open places where windows had been. But 
the shadows were already deepening in the great, 
open doorway beside the road. 

Helen was for turning back now. She was all 
brisked up with the desire to hurry home with 
this sweet burden of happiness. 

“No, let’s go up there,” he said, making a ges¬ 
ture toward this door. 

They climbed the slope from the road, hand in 
hand, and sat upon a long stone step, the fields 
before them changing already beneath the laven¬ 
der mists of twilight, the river singing below, the 
bright squares of sunlight fading from the black 
smoked walls within, the shadows in there deep¬ 
ening to darkness behind them. But what soft 
effulgence in this girl’s face! Already the candles 
upon her altar burned. For so many years she 
kept that look of pale candle light in the dark. 

73 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

Her features changed; the skin lost its rosy glow; 
her beauty passed away; but this serene brightness 
never faded. When I knew her long afterwards 
she was in the full bloom of her years, her eyes of 
that calmer blue women get when all the storms 
of love and loving have passed and left the heart 
motionless with the awful peace of victory over 
love. And she was still thinking of love, as one 
recalls an epitaph! 

Besides the happiness of having her beside him, 
clasped like a banner to his side, George had some¬ 
thing to say. He must make Helen understand 
one thing, and he thought he could do this now 
without risking his happiness. He did not antici¬ 
pate that any emergency would ever arise between 
them that would force him to fall back on this 
conviction about love; but he had it; he had 
studied the science of social ethics in the univer¬ 
sity—an illuminating subject under a singularly 
broad-minded doctor of philosophy named 
Herron. 

The ethics were binding, of course, but between 
the lines and the laws Herron interpolated his 
own views on love. He had more than once at¬ 
tacked what he called the barbarous “contract of 
marriage.” Divorce was one of the articles of 
his creed. When Nature called for a separation 

74 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


of the contracting parties, it was abominable not 
to yield to this natural law, otherwise you pro¬ 
faned that most sacred of all things—love, and 
so on and so forth. 

George entertained a profound respect for 
Herron. Most of the young men in his classes 
did. Still, they referred to him as “that fellow 
Herron/’ and discussed his views more than they 
did those of any other member of the faculty. 
In this way George had obtained one of his strong¬ 
est convictions, a sort of pet moral; and as he had 
already taken occasion to inform Helen, “no man 
on God’s green earth was more faithful to his con¬ 
victions.” 

“You know what I believe about love,” he 
began, drawing her closer to him according to this 
faith, it appeared. 

“Me!” she answered with charming confidence. 

“Oh, yes,” kissing her; “you are love, and my 
life.” 

She sighed. 

“That is why I believe in the freedom of love,” 
he began again. “There can be no bondage— 
ever—in love.” 

“Only the vows we take,” she whispered. 

“Yes, of course, marriage,” he admitted. 

“It is like being confirmed—in love—isn’t it?” 

75 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Why, yes, for those who love.” 

“And we do,” she said. 

“Yes, indeed,” he returned heartily—and hur¬ 
riedly, if she had noticed; for she was getting off 
on the wrong tack, and he wanted to say what he 
had to say before this wind filled her sails. “But 
it is by love, not law, that you chose me; isn’t it?” 

“Oh, yes, my love,” she answered softly. 

“Otherwise you would not take me,” he 
went on. 

“But I do love you.” 

“But if the time ever came when—when you 
ceased to care for me—” he stammered and did 
not finish, feeling her stiffen as if by a resolve in 
his arms. 

“It could not come, such a time,” she inter¬ 
rupted, “because I could never cease to love you.” 

“I know it, my sweetheart,” speaking with 
tender gratitude, “but I am only supposing the 
case, that if either of us ceased to care—” 

She tore herself from him. She covered him 
with her wide, blue gaze. “Could you—cease to 
care?” she demanded. 

“Absolutely no! You are my very life. I 
think, live and hope everything in terms of you,” 
he assured her. 

But she was not assured. She remained apart, 

76 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


no longer yielding to his arms about her. “Well, 
why think about what will not happen?” she 
asked. 

“I told you we were only supposing—” 

“Not I?” 

“—that if you or I,” he went on determined 
to make his point, “ceased to love, it would be 
profanation to—pretend—to live as if we did, 
wouldn’t it?” 

“But, George,” with a note of pain, with the 
brightening of tears in her eyes, “we shall be one. 
It says so everywhere, in the Bible, in the vows 
we take, that we are one flesh. Then how can 
either of us cease to love?” 

“We won’t; we never shall,” he cried elo¬ 
quently, and drawing her fearful, only half-will¬ 
ing in a close embrace. “But I must be honest 
with you. This is my conviction, the sanctity and 
freedom of love.” 

“It sounds well, but it feels dangerous,” she 
whispered. 

“Don’t you believe in me, Helen?” in an of¬ 
fended tone. 

“I do, oh, I do; but not in your conviction,” 
she moaned. 

“What difference does it make, my heart? We 
love. We have chosen each other,” he laughed. 

77 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Forever ?” she wanted to know. 

“Forever!” he repeated with emphasis. 

She leaned close to his side, her head upon his 
breast, her eyes closed, lips parted, white teeth 
gleaming. He knew for certain that nothing 
could separate him from this goodness, this sweet¬ 
ness, this loveliness. He merely wished to be on 
the level, to conceal nothing from her that con¬ 
cerned them so nearly. He kissed her raptur¬ 
ously. 

She opened her eyes, human violets, blue like 
these flowers, innocent like a maid, but troubled 
as if far away cold winds were sweeping down. 
“Do you feel the wind*?” she said. 

“There is no wind.” 

“Yes; and cold; I feel the chill.” 

“The air from the river,” he said, releasing her. 

“And the sun is down. It is late. We must 
go,” she said. 

They went back down the slope to the road, 
hand in hand as they had come up, but not the 
same. The pain which accompanies love had en¬ 
tered her heart. 

She was never to be perfectly easy again. No 
woman ever is who loves. Some months, some 
days, at last a few hours and a few moments 
of happiness she was to have with which to bal- 

78 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ance the years of life with love and this pain. 
But ask her! She will tell you that they were 
worth more than the years. So many more 
women than we know are like that. 

Once when they were near the town, he looked 
at her happily and said: “I have not told you the 
news. It concerns you, too, now. I got a raise in 
salary yesterday.” 

“I am so glad,” she answered smiling. 

“Oh, I deserved it. I am making good. Father 
knows it,” he put in. 

“You do work hard,” she agreed. 

“But not near as hard as I mean to work now 
—for you,” he assured her. 

She tightened her fingers upon his in reply. 

“I mean to be a successful man, Helen, for 
you. You shall have everything.” 

“I need only you,” she answered. 

“The world is a wolf, did you know that 4 ?” 

She did not, she said. 

“Yes, it is; and the man that makes good in it 
has got to be a wolf too.” 

The lamb looked up at the wolf and smiled. 
She was merely noticing for the hundredth time 
how handsome he was, and wishing he had com¬ 
pared himself to a lion. She preferred to think 
of him as a lion. 


79 










V 



4 




PART TWO 







PART TWO 


CHAPTER VIII 

Three days after the homing birds flitting 
about the old foundry on the river road witnessed 
the betrothal of George and Helen, Mrs. George 
William Cutter was seen to issue from her resi¬ 
dence at five o’clock in the afternoon. It was 
barely possible at any time to do this on Wiggs 
Street without being observed by the secret eyes 
of your neighbors and exciting a purely private 
interest in where you were going. But it was 
absurdly impossible for Mrs. Cutter to have es¬ 
caped on this occasion without exciting the live¬ 
liest curiosity, owing to the way she looked and 
her obvious destination, as compared with what 
she had been saying quite freely for the last three 
months to any one who wanted to know what 
her feelings and opinions were concerning a cer¬ 
tain matter. 

Her hair was crimped, although this was Thurs¬ 
day and she never put it up on hairpins except on 
Saturday nights “for Sunday.” She wore a small, 

83 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

glistening, lavender straw hat wreathed in lilacs 
of that shade of pink grown only by milliners. 
A helpless thing securely pinned on, which some¬ 
how gave the impression of having involuntarily 
drawn back from her face in a mild flowerlike 
terror of this face. Any one seeing her might 
have understood the feelings of this hat. Her 
countenance seemed to burn, probably from the 
summer heat, possibly from some fiery emotion. 
Her red brown eyes spat sparks, her neck was 
bowed until she accomplished what Nature had 
not designed she should have, a wrinkle that 
made a thin double chin. 

Her frock was of gray silk, high at the neck, 
tight at the waist, full in the skirt, “garnished” 
with three graduated bands of satin ribbon above 
a flounce at the bottom. It rustled richly as she 
walked, and she fairly crimped the ground as 
she walked, taking short, emphatic steps, as if 
the high heels of her slippers were stings with 
which she stung whatever was lawful for an in¬ 
dignant woman to sting with her heels. 

She was on her way to Helen Adams and her 
mother. She had tried to reason with George 
about this hasty marriage. She had pointed out 
to him that while the girl was a nice girl, and 
so on and so forth, only to have George fling 

84 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


out of the room as if she had insulted him. She 
had talked to Mr. Cutter about it, who had told 
her briefly, if not rudely, that she had better 
mind her own business and leave these young 
people to attend to theirs since they would do 
it, anyhow. As if George was not, and had not 
been, her own and chief business from the day 
of his birth. She had moped and suffered these 
three days. At last she had resolved to do her 
duty, since it was the only thing left that she 
could do. She would go and call on the Adamses, 
“recognize” them, and thus by the sacrifice of her 
pride and convictions, reinstate herself with 
George. 

The lot of a mother was a sad one! She had 
the pangs by which her child, in this case a son, 
was born. She nursed him. She had the care of 
him, never thinking of herself. Then when he 
was old enough to give her some returns, he goes 
off against her advice and gives himself to an¬ 
other woman who, she knows, and will live to 
see, is unsuited to him, and on top of all this she 
must sacrifice her feelings, stultify herself, boot- 
lick George by going over there! She was so 
moved to pity of herself that the imminence of 
tears reminded her that she had forgotten her 
handkerchief. She went back to get it, thus keep- 

85 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

ing the neighbors in suspense, because she had to 
stop and powder her nose after blowing it. 

This time she came out, moving swiftly and 
rustlingly across the street to the Adams cottage. 
She did not doubt that she would be received 
cordially there. She did not know that Mrs. 
Adams had ceased to “speak’’ to her some time 
ago, because she had never been more than civil 
to Mrs. Adams, and therefore would not have 
known if that lady had passed a year without 
speaking to her. 

She was received, of course, but by no stretch 
of imagination could the reception have been 
called cordial. Mrs. Adams did it. She asked 
her in, and admitted coolly that yes, Helen was 
at home. She would “tell” her. She went out to 
do this. Mrs. Cutter’s eyes took one flight about 
the room. She made the best of what she saw. 
There certainly were some good pieces of golden 
oak in it. She wondered if the girl would be 
allowed to take her piano when she married. She 
hoped— 

Mrs. Adams returned, large, serene, dignified, 
very cool. She hoped Mrs. Cutter had been well^ 

Oh, yes, quite well, thanks. 

Then she told Mrs. Cutter voluntarily that if 
she had not been worried to death about Helen 

86 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


she supposed she might have been in her usual 
health. 

Mrs. Cutter raised her brows and said she hoped 
there was nothing the matter with Helen. 

Oh, no, the child was well and sillily happy, 
but this engagement! 

The two women stared at each other, ice and 
fire in these looks. Mrs. Cutter was astounded. 
Did her ears deceive her? They did not. 

Mrs. Adams was speaking in her large, welkin¬ 
ringing voice, distinctly audible in the street, 
across the street, for that matter. Helen was too 
young to marry, she was saying. She had not fin¬ 
ished school. She had expected to give her the 
best advantages in music. Helen had talent, a 
future before her. But what good would talent 
do a married woman? 

She asked Mrs. Cutter this and paused for a 
reply if Mrs. Cutter could make one. Evidently 
she could not. 

No good in the world! Mrs. Adams retorted 
by way of answering herself. The less personal 
promise she had of a future, the better it was for 
a married woman. To have a gift in you that 
you could not develop made for unhappiness. 
And what time would Helen have for her music 
now? None. What use would she have for it? 

87 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Practically none. And Helen had a very nice 
little talent for drawing. She had painted sev¬ 
eral placques, waving her hand at the evidences 
of her daughter’s art on the walls of the parlor. 
It was there—a placque the size of a dinner plate 
full of pansies, another one with roses painted 
on it. 

Mrs. Cutter’s eyes flew up obedient to these 
artless efforts in art, and immediately resumed 
their position on Mrs. Adams’ face, which was 
as full of meaning as the portrait of a Dutch 
mother done by an old master. 

“Of course you don’t know how I feel about 
it. You have never had a daughter,” she told 
Mrs. Cutter. “But I can tell you what it means. 
Your whole life is centered in her. You sacri¬ 
fice and plan for her. You think she is yours. 
Well, you are mistaken. She belongs to some 
man she has never seen. About the time you 
are beginning to have some peace and satisfaction 
in her, he comes and gets her, marries her, re¬ 
gardless of you. Then you spend the rest of 
your life watching her do her duty by him, go 
through what you have gone through in your 
own married life, if not worse, when if you could 
only have had your way a little while it would 
have been so different, and—” 

88 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

Fortunately she did not finish this sentence. 
Helen came in at this moment and gave a sweeter, 
politer turn to the conversation. 

Airs. Cutter had intended to discuss the situa¬ 
tion—in a kind way of course, but frankly. She 
wanted to give some advice, let Helen know how 
important it was for her to exert every effort to 
fit herself for the position she would have in the 
Cutter family. But she did nothing of the kind. 
She said a few pleasant things, kissed the girl 
cordially on both cheeks and hoped George would 
make her happy, to which Helen replied that he 
had already made her happy. Then she took her 
leave. 

Helen accompanied her to the door, Airs. 
Adams remained in the parlor. She had seen 
Airs. Cutter’s transit across the street when she 
came to make this call. She had read truly the 
mood of George’s mother. And she had attended 
to her. She had let her know a thing or two. 
Now she stood behind the parlor curtains watch¬ 
ing her again cross the street. This time it was 
less in the nature of a transit, she perceived, nod¬ 
ding her head grimly. Airs. Cutter’s neck was 
limber, her proud look had disappeared. Her 
hat, although she had not touched it, was tilted 
absurdly to one side, as if an invisible blow had 

89 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

struck it. And she was walking hurriedly, like 
a person in retreat. 

Mrs. Cutter barely made it across her own 
doorsill before she began to wring her hands. 
Oh! her Father in heaven, what kind of mother- 
in-law would that woman make to poor Georgie*? 
She received no immediate answer to this inter¬ 
rogative prayer. We never do. An answer to 
prayer comes when you wait until it is worked out 
somewhere in life. Her own suspicions answered 
it clearly enough, however; she must knuckle to 
some sort of courtship of that old Adams woman, 
or there was no telling what might happen. 

She had taken it for granted that George would 
bring his wife to his own home. One look at 
Mrs. Adams convinced her that if the young 
couple lived with anybody they would live with 
Helen’s mother. That would never do! Since 
George was determined to marry the girl the only 
wise course to follow would be to give him a home 
of his own. She would tell Mr. Cutter so, and 
why. He could afford to do something for 
George. He might make him a wedding present 
of the old Carrol place. It would cost something 
to repair the house, but anything would be better 
than sitting across the street and seeing George 
domesticated in the Adams home. 

90 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


All this is important to set down in order that 
you may realize the difficulty so many young 
people have in disentangling themselves from the 
lives of their elders and starting out for them¬ 
selves. We have escaped the old tribal instinct 
in everything more than in this. The son is per¬ 
suaded to bring his wife into his father’s house, 
or he does do it for the sake of economy. Noth¬ 
ing can be more disintegrating to the welding and 
growth of such a marriage. 

But the chief reason I have recorded what 
happened on this day is because it was by this 
accident of maternal jealousy that Helen came 
into possession of her house. So far from believ¬ 
ing in any sort of orderly destiny, my belief is 
that the Fates which change and control our lives 
are as uncertain as the flight of birds. The world 
about us is filled with contending forces. 

Some one whom you never saw or heard of 
looks at the ticker in his office and sells out that 
day. The next day that little package of bonds 
or stock in your safety-deposit box is not worth 
the embossed paper they are written on. Or, you 
turn a street corner, meet a man, walk two blocks 
with him, learn from him something about this 
same market which he does not know he has told 
in the course of his conversation, and you get the 

91 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


opportunity to become a rich man in this same 
market before night. Or, you who have always 
been a reasonably decent young man meet the 
eyes of a woman in a crowded place, and you 
pass on with her to a fate which leads to every 
dishonor. You had no intention of doing such 
a thing; it is contrary to your principles and your 
habits; but you do it. So many are subject to 
these whirlwinds of fate that you cannot tell by 
looking at them or even by hearing them pray 
which ones are steady and safe from disaster. It 
all depends upon the compass within whether we 
swing at the right moment into the right current. 

Just so, if Mrs. Adams had not resented the 
bow of Mrs. Cutter’s neck, the offensive em¬ 
phasis of her little wrinkle of a double chin, when 
she came to make that call, she might have re¬ 
ceived her amiably. And if Mrs. Cutter had 
been received amiably, her maternal jealousy 
might not have been so aroused and she would 
not have persuaded Mr. Cutter to give George 
the Carrol place. In that case the House of 
Helen might have been some other house, or no 
house at all. And her life would have been in all 
probability a different kind of existence. Be¬ 
cause the house in which a woman lives, moves 
and does her duties, determines her character 

92 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


much more than the bank does in which her hus¬ 
band transacts his affairs. 

If the reader is another woman, and has spent 
her spare time for nearly forty years, as I have, 
in a sort of involuntary study of men, she knows, 
as well as I do, that there is nothing you can see 
with the naked eye or put even your gloved finger 
on that does determine the character of a man. 
He never breaks his own personal confidence. It 
is no use to keep either your eye or your finger 
on him. You will never know him unless he goes 
to pieces like the one-horse shay, after which 
it is very unfortunate to know him at all. I am 
putting this down merely to give you a line on 
how effervescently Helen came into possession of 
her house, though it seemed so natural that she 
should have it, and to warn you that while you 
think you know what will happen in this story, 
you do not know, because you do not know 
George. You do not, even if your own husband 
is a similar George. 


93 


CHAPTER IX 


There is an old copy of the Shannon Sentinel , 
dated October 17, 1902, which contains an ac¬ 
count of the Adams-Cutter marriage. It lies 
folded in the trunk with Helen’s last girlhood 
hat, and a few other things of that tearful nature. 
I do not know why women keep these little yel¬ 
lowed and faded tokens of past hopes, unless it 
is for the same reason they devote themselves 
cheerfully and industriously to the cultivation of 
flower gardens on their cemetery lots where their 
dead lie so deeply buried. 

The dim type still tells how the altar in this 
church was decorated with flowers and ferns, who 
played the wedding march and who performed 
the ceremony. The bride was the beautiful and 
accomplished daughter of the late Sam Adams 
and Mrs. Mary Adams. 

‘Tate” is the adjective you get, instead of the 
plain civilian title of “Mister” you had while you 
were in the flesh. It depends whether this ex¬ 
change implies demotion or immortal inflation. 
But there can be no doubt about the significance 
of “Sam” in this connection. Mr. Adams was a 

94 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


carpenter, and a good one, but he never received 
credit in this present world for the concluding, 
dignifying syllables of his Christian name. 

In this same paragraph it tells how the bride 
was dressed, who her attendants were and what 
they wore. And simmers down in the last sen¬ 
tence to a description of the gowns worn by the 
respective mothers of the bride and groom. The 
word “exeunt” does not occur, of course; but that 
lick-and-a-promise praise of their toilettes really 
implies that this is the last prominent appearance 
of these worthy women. 

The concluding paragraph is devoted to the 
groom. And it is evident that the writer saved 
his most obsequious words for this final flare of 
flattery. The groom was the son of “our distin¬ 
guished fellow townsman, Mr. George William 
Cutter”—a “university man”; some reference 
was made to his “sterling qualities” and bright 
future. He had recently “accepted” a position in 
the First National Bank where he had already 
“made an enviable record”—cordial finger point¬ 
ing to “bright future.” “The young couple left 
on the noon train for a wedding tour in the East. 
Upon their return they will take up their resi¬ 
dence in their new home on Wiggs Street.” 

You and I may both believe that either one of 

95 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


us could have written a better account of this 
wedding, imparted more dignity to the occasion, 
as undoubtedly a real artist might paint a more 
pleasing portrait of you or me. But for a naively 
truthful likeness, we both know that a country- 
town photographer surpasses the artist when it 
comes to portraying the warped noses of our 
countenances, the worried eye and the mouths we 
really have. This is why we avoid his brutal 
veracity when we can afford the expense. Neither 
one of us cares to leave the very scriptures of 
our faces to appall posterity. 

In the same manner, I contend there is always 
an artless charm, a sweet and scandalous candor 
in what appears in a country newspaper, which is 
more refreshing and informing than the elegance 
of our best writers in the use of words. For 
example, does not the Sentinel's account furnish a 
clearer picture and even a more intimate interpre¬ 
tation of this bride and groom and the whole 
scene, than you could possibly receive of a fash¬ 
ionable wedding from the social columns of a big 
city paper? Personally, I have frequently been 
offended by the cool, bragging insolence of these 
announcements of city weddings, as if all we were 
entitled to know is that they can afford the pomp 
and circumstance; nothing about their “bright fu- 

96 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ture,” or the bride’s “accomplishments,” or the 
groom’s “sterling qualities” to bid for our interest 
and good will. Why swagger in print about be¬ 
ing married? It is not a thing to boast about, 
but to be humble about, and to entreat the pray¬ 
ers of all Christian people, that they may behave 
themselves, keep their vows and do the square 
thing by each other and society. 

George and Helen returned to Shannon and 
their new home on Wiggs Street the last of 
October. 

Helen was far more beautiful than she had ever 
been, with that sedate air young wives acquire 
before they are becalmed by the stupefying 
monotony of love, peace and duty. The lines in 
George’s handsome young face were firmer. He 
had that look of resolution men of his type show, 
before it is confirmed into the next look of arro¬ 
gance and success. 

When Helen and George became engaged in 
August the Carrol house was simply an old gray 
farmhouse, overtaken years ago by the spreading 
skirts of Shannon, but never assimilated. This 
was due to the fact that when Wiggs Street was 
lengthened, it must be made straight whatever 
happened. The old house was left far to one side 
on a wide lawn. No one lived in it. Altheas and 

97 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


roses bloomed among the weeds, like gentle folk 
who have lost their station in life and make com¬ 
mon lot with the mean and the poor. Grass grew 
between the bricks of the walk which led to the 
front door. There was a hedge of bulbous-bodied 
boxwood on either side of this walk. The win¬ 
dows of the old house looked out on this green 
and growing desolation with the vacant stare they 
always have in an empty house. 

But since the end of August carpenters, plaster¬ 
ers and painters had swarmed over it and through 
it. Laborers had cleaned and cleared and pruned. 
At last came van loads of carpets, furniture and 
draperies. These had been smoothed, placed and 
hung inside. Now it looked like the same old 
house that had suddenly come into a modest for¬ 
tune, gone to town and bought itself a lot of nice 
things to wear. Not a gable had been changed, 
but the new roof had been painted green. The 
walls were so white that they glistened. The 
windows were so clean that they looked like the 
bright eyes of a lady with her veil lifted. 

On the evening of her first day in this house, 
Helen stood on the veranda waiting for George, 
watching the elm leaves sweeping past, a golden 
shower in the November wind. She had been 
very busy all day, not that there was anvthing to 

98 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

do, because everything had been done. But she 
had been going over her possessions, feeling the 
fullness and vastness of her estate. She had 
silver, yes, and fine linen. Her furniture was 
good, golden oak, every piece. Her rugs were 
florescent, very cheerful. 

She needed more furniture; the rooms looked 
sparsely settled, especially the parlor. A book¬ 
case would help, and a few pictures on the walls, 
but all in good time. She would be contented, 
ask for nothing else. She meant to be a thrifty, 
helpful wife, do her own work, take care of 
George. She was simply speechlessly happy. 
So it was just as well she had no one to talk to 
She wished to be alone except for George, to con¬ 
centrate upon all this joy. It seemed too good to 
be true. She had this house, to be sweetened into 
a home, and all these things; above and transcend¬ 
ing everything, she had George. She was abso¬ 
lutely sure of him. Is there anything more cer¬ 
tain than sunshine when the sun shines? 

This day was a criterion of all her days. She 
was very busy. She expected to find time for 
her music, and to read a little. She must keep 
up with what was going on for George’s sake, 
so that she would be an intelligent companion for 
him. But she never found time; besides, George 

99 

) 

* j 

> 1 A 

> > 

> > ) 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


cared less than she had supposed for music, and 
he was strangely indifferent to intelligent conver¬ 
sation, seeing what an intelligent man he was. 

Sometimes she returned a few calls, merely 
from a sense of duty. She was never lonely. 
Sometimes her mother came to lunch and spent 
the afternoon. On Sundays they went to church 
and had dinner with George’s father and mother. 
As the months passed, Mrs. Cutter frequently 
asked her how she “felt.” She always felt well 
and told her so. She did not notice that Mrs. 
Cutter took little pleasure in her abounding 
health. The spring and summer passed. She was 
very busy in her garden among the flowers. 

One day Mrs. Adams warned her against tak¬ 
ing so much violent exercise. 

“But why?” Helen asked, standing up with a 
trowel in her hand, radiantly flushed. 

Mrs. Adams said nothing. She merely meas¬ 
ured her daughter this way and that with a sort 
of tape-line gaze. 

“I like working out here, and I am perfectly 
well,” Helen insisted. 

“A married woman never knows when she is 
perfectly well. It is your duty to be careful,” 
was the reply. 

Helen flushed and remained silent. She felt 

100 


i « 1 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


that her mother was staring at her inquisitively 
through this silence as she had sometimes seen her 
peep through the drawn curtains before a window 
to satisfy her curiosity or her anxiety. 

When at last Mrs. Adams took her departure, 
Helen went in, closed the door of her room and 
sat down on the side of her bed. 

I do not know how it is with men, but there are 
thoughts a woman cannot think if the door is 
open, even if there is not another soul in the 
house. Helen was now engaged in this sort of 
secret-prayer contemplation of herself, a slim, 
pretty figure, sitting with her knees crossed, hands 
folded, lips parted, eyes fixed in a long blue gaze 
upon the clean white walls of this room. 

So that was it! She was the object of—antici¬ 
pation which had not been—rewarded. The color 
in her cheeks deepened. She recalled this ques¬ 
tion, that remark, made by George’s mother. She 
understood the curious look of suspense with 
which Mrs. Cutter frequently regarded her. She 
wished to remind her of a duty she owed the 
Cutter family. The meaning of it all was per¬ 
fectly clear to her now. As if it was anybody’s 
business! She was indignant by this time. She 
began to shake one foot. Her eyes flew this way 
and that, like the wings of a distracted bird. She 

101 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


was really arguing fiercely with George’s mother, 
saying the things which we never dare to say in 
fact. She flounced, bobbing up and down on the 
springs beneath her, set her impatient foot down, 
closed her lips firmly and looked really fierce. 
Evidently she was getting the better of this argu¬ 
ment, chiefly, no doubt, because Mrs. Cutter was 
not there. 

Suddenly she lifted her left hand, counted the 
fingers and in turn used up all the fingers of her 
right hand in this triumphant enumeration. Yes, 
she had been married exactly ten months. Not a 
year yet. Why was everybody in such a hurry, 
even her mother 1 ? 

Then something happened. She became very 
still, as you do sometimes when the future, which 
always keeps its bright back to you, suddenly 
turns around and permits you to behold the face 
of the years to come. The color faded from her 
cheeks; her eyes widened into a look of terror. 
She gave a gasp and buried her face in the pillow. 

Oh, God, oh, her Father in heaven, suppose it 
should always be like this! Suppose she lived to 
be an old woman and never had a child. Doing 
just the same things over, alone in the house. 
Nothing to look forward to all day except 
George’s return at the end of it. And nothing 

102 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


for him to expect except herself coming from the 
kitchen to welcome him and hurrying back again, 
lest something burned or boiled over if she de¬ 
layed a moment. What would she be in her hus¬ 
band’s house if she did not become a mother to 
his children? 

She sprang to her feet and tore off the pink 
apron she was wearing over her summer frock. 
“I shall be a servant, nothing else,” she cried, tidy¬ 
ing her hair before the mirror. “I shall grow old 
and gray; my skin will be yellow and, if I don’t 
—if we do not have children, I shall begin pres¬ 
ently to look like a good servant, the kind that 
never gives notice, but just stays on and dies in 
the family. Oh!” 

She flew back to the bed, cast herself upon it 
and wept aloud to the ceiling. 

An audience makes hypocrites of us all. The 
very mirror in your room will do it. The best 
acting is always done in secret. If you could see 
that little mouse of a woman whom you never 
suspect of having more than the timid sniff of 
an emotion, charging up and down the room in 
her nightdress, tearing her hair and raving with 
her eyes, making no sound lest you should hear 
her, you would be astonished. And she might 
be no less amazed if she could see you carrying 

103 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


on like a proud female Cicero, delivering the mere 
gestures of an eloquent oration. No acting we 
ever see on the stage equals the histrionic ability 
of the least talented woman when it comes to 
these bed-chamber theatricals of her secret emo¬ 
tions. 

Helen was calmer when George returned from 
the bank an hour later. She met him as usual. 
But the sight of him unnerved her. She flung 
herself upon his breast and clung to him, as if a 
strong wind was blowing which might sweep her 
away from him forever. 

“Helen! My heart, what is the matter'?” he 
exclaimed. 

She sobbed. 

“Are you ill?” he said, turning her face so that 
it lay upon his breast, chin quivering, eyes closed. 

No, she was not ill, she said. The white lids 
lifted. She regarded him sorrowfully. “Only I 
want to ask you something. I must know,” she 
whispered. 

“Ask anything; only don’t cry. I can’t stand 
it,” kissing her. 

“George,” she began after a pause. 

“Yes, my life,” in grave suspense. 

“Am I a good wife?” 

Good heaven! What a question. Of course 

104 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

she was, the best and loveliest wife a man ever 
had. 

“But aren’t you—have you been disappointed 
in me 4 ?” 

“You surpass my happiest dreams of happi¬ 
ness,” he assured her hastily. Now was every¬ 
thing all right 4 ? 

Apparently not. She had gone off into another 
paroxysm of sobs. He stood with this storm of 
loveliness clasped to his breast amazed and horri¬ 
fied. What was the matter with Helen 4 ? He had 
left her calm and happy at noon. He found her 
now in torrential tears. She must be ill. 

He lifted her tenderly in his arms, strode down 
the hall to their room and deposited her on the 
bed. 

44 You will always love me, whatever hap¬ 
pens 4 ?” she insisted, clinging to his hand. 

He sat down beside her. He filled his lungs; 
he expanded himself. He must meet this emer¬ 
gency. 4 'Helen, I could not live without loving 
you,” he exclaimed in a deep and powerful voice. 

“But if nothing happens, if nothing ever hap¬ 
pens*?” she wailed. 

He was speechless. When you are caught up 
without a moment’s notice and made to swear to 
every article of undying love, what else can you 

105 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


do? But she lay wilted, deadly pale, her eyes 
fixed upon him dolorously, as if he might be going 
to slay her with the next word. Therefore— 

He did not finish thinking what he was about 
to think. A sort of shock passed through him, 
he caught his breath, looked off, the faintest shade 
of embarrassment in this look addressed to the 
ceiling, but not painful. On the contrary you 
might have inferred that this was a pleasurable 
confusion. He was instantly calmed, no longer 
disturbed about Helen. He stared at her politely 
as at an unknown but highly satisfactory phe¬ 
nomenon. He had no experience in a case like 
this, but he had instincts. Every young husband 
is a father, at least by anticipation. His impres¬ 
sion was that she must be soothed, kept quiet. 

He bent and kissed her gravely, as you kiss the 
Bible when you take an oath. “Don’t worry, my 
sweet; you will come around all right,” he told 
her. 

She turned her face away, closed her eyes in 
tearful despair. He had not answered her ques¬ 
tion. He had evaded with soft words. This 
would never do. She was beginning to weep 
again. He said he would go to the phone and 
call her mother. 


106 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Don’t call mother. She has been here all 
afternoon,” she cried. 

So, then Mrs. Adams knew. Well, he didn’t 
care if the whole world knew. “Helen, you must 
not let go like this. You will hurt yourself,” he 
said with a note of authority. 

Her ears heard him; her eyes caught him. For 
one moment she lay still and sobless. Then she 
sat up, hair streaming over her shoulders, cheeks 
reddening. “You too!” she cried. “Oh, you 
have all had the same thought in your minds. 
And it isn’t so,” she informed him. 

“Well, if nothing is the matter, what is the 
matter?” he demanded after a pause in the voice 
of a man sliding from the top of a climax. 

“That is,” covering her face with her hands. 
“Your mother, my mother, you, too, all of you 
have been expecting something that may never 
happen. And I did not know, did not realize 
until this day the meaning of these hints, these 
questions, this solicitude. It was not for me. I 
do not deserve it, you understand. I am not that 
way.” Oh! her Heavenly Father, she knew what 
was before her now if she never had a child. She 
would not be the same to him! 

“Of course you will, you silly darling,” he 

107 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


laughed, gathering her in his arms. “The fact is, 
I am immensely relieved.” 

In this wise they took a new lease on their 
happiness. Helen’s skies cleared. It was good 
to be free and well and just a girl “a while 
longer,” as George put it. Still this was a form 
of probation. That phrase, “a while longer,” was 
the involuntary admission he made of his ulti¬ 
mate expectations. For his own part, he declared 
it was much better for him to make some headway 
in the bank before they could really afford the 
expensive luxury of having children. Still he 
felt a bit let down at the contemplation for the 
first time of the bare possibility of his wife not 
bearing these children for him. 

Thus the first year of their married life ended 
and the next one began. In the main you can 
see that every sign for the future was propitious. 
These two young people had the right mind 
toward each other; no modern decadence, no de¬ 
sire to sidestep Nature or fail in their duty. 
Their instincts were normal, their hopes honor¬ 
able. 

How is it then that, with all good intentions, 
they both missed their cue? It is not for me to 
say. My task is to tell this story and leave each 
reader to judge for himself where the blame lay. 

108 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


No doubt there will be many decisions. I have 
often wondered if even three judges who passed 
on the same case without knowing each other’s 
decision, would not each of them render a dif¬ 
ferent judgment. But in regard to this matter, 
I may be pennitted to remark in passing that most 
of us miss our cue in the business of living, 
whether we are escorted by the best intentions or 
a few valorous vices. And my theory is that if 
we live long enough, we shall hear the Prompter 
in time to make a good ending. If we do not, 
there is a considerable stretch of eternity before 
us where no doubt adjustments may be made with 
a wider mind. 


109 



CHAPTER X 


In 1913, Shannon had grown amazingly. The 
square was now a “plaza,” surrounded by hand¬ 
some brick business houses. There were two or 
three factories on the outskirts of the town. The 
little old churches that used to be filled on Sab¬ 
bath mornings had given place to fine churches 
with stained-glass windows, which were greatly 
reduced in membership. What I mean is that 
the town was prosperous, and had a beam in its 
eye. Wiggs Street was completely changed and 
there was some talk of changing the name to 
“Cutter Avenue.” But this was not done. Every 
man has his enemies. There were many preten¬ 
tious residences now where cottages formerly 
stood. Some of them had conservatories. No¬ 
body kept potted plants on the front porch, but 
some of them had got as far as keeping potted 
cedars on their stone gate posts and a colored man 
in rubber boots to scrub the front steps. 

George Cutter, no longer known as “young 
George” since the death of his father, received 
much credit for the growth and development of 
the town. It was Mr. Cutter who had induced 

110 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


certain Eastern capitalists to locate these fac¬ 
tories near Shannon. He was more than a promi¬ 
nent citizen at home. He was somebody in New 
York. He had “influence” in Washington. 
Otherwise Shannon would never have obtained 
her hundred-thousand-dollar post office. He car¬ 
ried Shannon County in his pocket, politically 
speaking, and he kept his congressman in the other 
pocket, in the same figurative manner. 

Five years after he entered the bank, he was 
occupying the chair and desk on the left side of 
the door where his father sat when George began 
his career on the adding machine in the cage. Mr. 
Cutter, Senior, was still the nominal president, 
but he had a finer desk and more comfortable, 
less businesslike chair in the rear of his son. He 
was now a fat old man, drooling down to a heavy 
old age. He was merely president from force of 
habit. He did nothing but watch, with slumber¬ 
ous pride, his son paw the markets, reach out, 
speculate, risk and win, make a name for himself 
in the financial world. 

But in 1913 all this was ancient history. The 
young wolf had been just beginning then to get a 
toothhold. Now he had arrived. He had “inter¬ 
ests” in the big corporations. When he became 
president, after the death of his father, the first 

111 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


thing he did was to sell this small building to a 
local trust company and build a finer, larger place 
for his bank. Here he had an office, off the direc¬ 
tors’ room in the rear, as magnificent and grave as 
a sanctuary. And it was so proudly private that 
there was no spangled glass door leading to it 
visible to the vulgar public eye. Capitalists and 
promoters visited him here, but the regular cus¬ 
tomers of the bank rarely saw him except by 
accident when he issued from this office, hatted, 
spatted, coated, carrying a cane hooked over his 
arm, and stepping briskly across the lobby 
through the door to where his car stood and 
shone against the curb. In that case their eyes 
followed him. And if these eyes belonged to 
women, of whatever age, they were likely to ex¬ 
claim, breathe or think, “What a handsome 
man!” 

He was more than handsome, a “presence,” 
almost a perfect imitation of elegance. He was 
the kind of man who kept his years under foot. 
He trod them down with so much swiftness and 
power in this business of getting on that they had 
not marked him. His face was smooth, his red 
hair still opulent, his eyes brilliant, masterful. 
When he came in or went out or passed by, they 
were always fixed on something straight ahead, as 

112 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


if you were not there, anxious to catch his glance 
and have the honor of speaking to him. Probably 
you wanted to remind him of how well you remem¬ 
bered when he started to work in the old bank. 
And you were a friend of his father, and had 
always kept your account in this bank and would 
continue to do so. But you must be a wheedling, 
forward old man to get the chance to say such 
things to him, because your account means noth¬ 
ing to him now, and your good memory only 
annoys him. 

The reason so many men, after they become 
distinguished or successful, get this habit of look¬ 
ing straight ahead when we are standing ingra¬ 
tiatingly near, wishing to claim acquaintanceship 
with them in their humbler past, is because they 
wish to forget this past, and especially you who 
retain the speaking tongue of it. 

George Cutter had outgrown Shannon. Shan¬ 
non might be proud of him, but it could not be 
intimate with him. He did not belong there. 
He was a big town man. You could almost smell 
Wall Street as he passed you, Williams Street, 
anyhow, which is only one of the elbows of Wall 
Street—a notable perfume, I can tell you, of 
pop-eyed dollars and busy bonds that never 
rested, but were always being sold again. 

113 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Seeing George thus, enhanced by ten additional 
years, you naturally want to know what changes 
have taken place in Helen. 

Sometimes a slender, fair woman might be seen 
in Cutter’s limousine, waiting at the curb before 
the bank. But if you saw her, you scarcely 
noticed her, because there was nothing distin¬ 
guishing in her appearance. She always sat very 
still with her hands folded, her lips closed so 
tightly that they appeared to be primped, and 
with her eyes wide open, very blue like curtains 
drawn before windows, concealing every thought 
and feeling within. When Cutter came through 
the door of the bank, stepped quickly forward and 
swung himself into this car with the air of a 
man who has not a moment to spare, she always 
drew a trifle closer into her corner of the seat. 
Then they slid away noiselessly across the square 
and out Wiggs Street. Even the chauffeur knew 
that Mr. Cutter never had a moment to spare and 
invariably exceeded the speed limit. 

No word of greeting was exchanged between 
this husband and wife—not even a look. She 
did not so much as unpurse her lips to smile. 
His arrogant silence implied that he was alone in 
this car. Yet we must know that it was his wish 
she should come for him, since she so often did 

114 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

come and wait for him with this look of dutiful 
patience. 

The married relation is not vocative. It tends 
toward silence and a sort of dreary neutrality, 
arrived at by years of mutual defeats. It is 
easier for a man to be agreeable to another woman 
who is not his wife for the simple reason that he 
is innocent of this stranger. She knows none of 
his faults and she has not failed him in anything. 
And every woman knows that she is instinctively 
more entertaining to a man who is not her hus¬ 
band, even if she despises this man and truly, 
patiently loves her husband, because she is under 
no bond to agree with him nor to avoid his preju¬ 
dices. There is nothing accusative or immoral in 
this fact, any more than there is in a momentary 
change of thought. It is perfectly natural, when 
you consider how many years they must dwell 
upon the same common sense of each other. 

If the weather was fine, Cutter only stopped 
long enough to drop Helen at the house. He 
might tell her he would be late for dinner or he 
might be late without telling her. Then he was 
driven at the same spanking, glittering speed to 
the golf and country club^ for a foursome previ¬ 
ously arranged. 

Cutter had imported the idea of this club. As 

115 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

Cadmus introduced letters into Greece, so had 
he brought golf to the business men of Shannon. 
Until then middle-aged citizens accepted the sed¬ 
entary habits of their years and went down to 
their graves corpulent and muscleless, developing 
only a little miserliness toward the last or a few 
crapulous vices. But now these men, grown bald 
and gray, who had never spent a surplus nickel 
nor taken more exercise than healthy invalids, 
hired caddies for fifty cents an hour, and spent 
recklessly for golf sticks and especially golf stock¬ 
ings and breeches. And they were to be seen any 
afternoon stepping springily over these links, 
whacking balls—for the ninth hole at least—with 
all the reared-back, straddle-legged, arm-swing¬ 
ing genuflections of enthusiastic youth. Mission¬ 
aries have spent twenty years in the heart of 
Africa without accomplishing so much healthful 
good for the savages there. But in that case the 
idea of course is not to prolong the life of a 
savage, but to save his soul. Still, Cutter was a 
successful missionary in this matter of golf, be¬ 
cause the souls of the men in Shannon had long 
been sufficiently enured to the gospel to be saved, 
if they could be. 

As for the women, that was a dinerent matter. 

116 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

Very few people ever worry seriously about the 
salvation of these milder creatures. Until quite 
recently they have been so securely preserved, 
sheltered and possessed that it was actually diffi¬ 
cult for a woman to lose her soul by any obvious 
overt transgression. Even then you could not be 
sure she had lost it, since she suffered such over¬ 
whelming martyrdom for her offense. And we do 
not know what kind balances may be arranged in 
the Book of Life for these poor victims of life in 
the flesh. 

There was also a different standard for women 
in the matter of outdoor exercise, even at so re¬ 
cent a date as this of which I write. They might 
caper adventuresomely in the open as girls, but 
the idea of a married woman spreading her feet 
and swinging her club at a ball on the golf links 
at Shannon was unthinkable. If they wanted the 
air, let them go out-of-doors; if they wanted exer¬ 
cise, let them go back indoors and do something. 

So Helen never accompanied her husband to 
the golf links. She always went in the house and 
did things that would please him, or at least sat¬ 
isfy him when he came home. 

They were still living in the house at the end 
of Wiggs Street. No changes had been made in 

117 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


it, not a stitch had been added to it. It was 
simply laundered, so to speak, once in so often 
with a fresh coat of white paint. 

But it was not so sparsely settled within as it 
had been when she came there as a bride. 

Two years after Helen’s marriage Mrs. Adams 
had passed away with no to-do about going at 
all. She was ill three days, very quietly and 
comfortably unconscious. Then she had gone to 
join that highly respectable class of saints in 
paradise to which no doubt her carpenter husband 
already belonged. Helen inherited her mother’s 
estate, which consisted of a few thousand dollars’ 
worth of securities in her safety box at the bank, 
the cottage on Wiggs Street and the contents of 
this cottage. The cottage was promptly sold and, 
together with the sale of the securities, furnished 
George with the money for his first successful 
speculation. 

But Helen would not part with the furniture. 
She had it brought to her own house. When she 
had distributed it in the rooms, the hall, all avail¬ 
able spaces were filled with it. Her father’s por¬ 
trait, done in crayon, hung above the parlor 
mantel. Her mother’s portrait, also a crayon, 
hung on the opposite wall. For years to come 
these two Adams parents were to stare at each 

118 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


other in a grim silence, as much as to say, “There 
will be a reckoning in this house some day!” 
which was due, of course, to the crudely veracious 
expression the amateur artist always gets with a 
crayon pencil. For at that time there was noth¬ 
ing but love and happiness and hope in this 
house. George was really planning then to build 
a mansion where this house stood. For a while 
they amused themselves drawing plans for this 
mansion. Then George became more and more 
absorbed in his business. He had less time for 
fanciful conversation with Helen. In any case 
the subject of the new house was dropped. It 
had not been mentioned for years. 

I suppose if there had been children the new 
house would have been built. But nothing had 
“happened.” Helen kept a cat, a canary bird and 
two servants. The cat was a sort of serial cat, 
exchanged once in so often for a kitten. The bird 
was the same one. She did not really care for 
cats, nor much for canaries, but they served the 
purpose of furnishing some sort of sound and 
motion in this silent house. She did not want the 
servants, either. She preferred to do her own 
work. She would have made an excellent wife 
for a poor man. She was a marvelously good one 
to George, who was rapidly becoming a rich man. 

119 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

She might have been a wonderful caretaker of 
a great man; she had exactly the right spirit of 
service and self-effacement. She developed a 
serene silence which was restful, never irritating. 
But George was not and never would be a great 
man. He needed a brilliant woman, and Helen 
was only a beautiful woman. He needed a charm¬ 
ing hostess for his home, with social gifts. And 
Helen was only an excellent housekeeper. He 
knew that this house was atrociously furnished, 
but he did not know how it should be furnished. 
You may be highly appreciative of music without 
being a musician. He felt the need of fine, quiet 
things and neutral tones in his home, but he had 
neither the time nor the ability to achieve these 
effects. 

Once, indeed, shortly after Helen had re¬ 
arranged the parlor with the old Adams whatnot 
and the Adams sofa with a golden-oak spindle 
back, he had sent out two handsome mahogany 
armchairs, his idea being to overcome the monoto¬ 
nous color and cheapness of this room. These 
chairs looked like two bishops at a populist meet¬ 
ing. Helen was pleased, but he had sense enough 
to know that he had blundered. 

I am merely giving you his side of this affair, 
frankly admitting that she was by nature dis- 

120 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


qualified to fill the position of wife to such a 
man. In the last analysis, of course, it would de¬ 
pend upon which of these two people such a man 
as George Cutter or such a woman and wife as 
Helen is the worthier type, or the more service¬ 
able to his day and generation. It is not the 
reaping of what we sow ourselves—sometimes it 
is the reaping of what the other fellow sowed, the 
way we bear the burden of that—which deter¬ 
mines our quality and courage. 

As for Helen, the elder Mrs. Cutter said it all 
shortly before her death. 

One summer evening she lay propped high in 
bed, her thin knees sticking up, her thin face 
stingingly vivid, her eyes spiteful with pain and 
discontent. Helen had just gone home after her 
daily visit, during which she ministered with exas¬ 
perating patience to this invalid. Mr. Cutter sat 
beside his wife’s bed concerned for her, anxious 
to comfort her, but secretly wondering where she 
would strike. For he perceived by the spitting 
spark in her eye that she was about to strike. 

“Helen is hopeless,” she exclaimed. 

He was relieved not to be the target. Still he 
said something in reply about Helen’s being a 
“good girl.” 

“Yes, and that is all she is. She is not the wife 

121 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

for George. I knew it from the first,” she keyed 
off irritably. 

Mr. Cutter ventured timidly that she had made 
George a “good wife.” 

“Good, good, good,” she repeated. “I wish 
somebody could think of some other word for her. 
But they can’t. Good’s the adjective she’s been 
known by all her life.” 

“Well, it is a very good way to be known, my 
dear,” he returned mildly. 

“There you go again. Lower my pillow, Mr. 
Cutter. I can’t keep my head up and think about 
her. She weighs on me like a load of commonest 
virtues.” 

He let her gently down. She glared at him. 
He smoothed her pillow. Would she like a sup 
of water*? 

No! and she was not to be diverted, if that was 
what he was trying to do. “Do you know what 
a merely good woman can be*?” she demanded. 

The word good occurred to him again. He 
wanted to say that there was nothing better than 
a good woman, but he refrained. He must not 
irritate Maggie; if only she would not work her¬ 
self up. 

“She can be the least intelligent creature alive, 
obsessed with the practice of her duties. Her 

122 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

mind inside her, never in touch with what is 
bigger and more important outside. She can be 
the stone around her husband’s neck. That is 
what Helen is.” 

Mr. Cutter sighed. He was fond of Helen. 

“What has she ever done for George? I ask 
you that.” She waited for his answer as if she 
defied him to name one thing Helen had done to 
help her husband. 

“Well, she’s been a good wife to him,” he re¬ 
peated futilely. 

“There you go again,” she exclaimed. “I’ve 
been a good wife to you, too, haven’t I?” 

“Indeed you have, my dear,” he answered 
gratefully. 

“But was I contented with being just that? 
When we came to this town as poor as church 
mice and you got the position in the bank, I 
made up my mind that you should be president 
of that bank some day, and you are, aren’t you?” 

“Yes, my dear, and I owe everything to you—” 

“Not everything, Mr. Cutter,” she interrupted 
with a sniff; “but I helped you; I made friends 
for you; I showed off before people to let them 
know you were prosperous and a coming man. I 
had some pride.” 

“You did, my dear. You were game and 

123 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


looked it,” he answered with a watery smile of 
memory in his eye. 

“And I bore a son for you.” 

“You ought not to blame Helen; you can’t—” 
he began. 

“Yes, I can,” she interrupted; “if she isn’t to 
have children, if poor George’s name is to die 
with him, she might at least help him enjoy his 
own career. But she doesn’t; she is becalmed. 
She hasn’t got it in her, I tell you, to do what 
I have done to show my pride and appreciation 
of the position you have made for us.” 

“But, Maggie, you are one woman in ten thou¬ 
sand. You have not only been the best of wives, 
you have been everything to me a man needs.” 

This reduced her to proud tears, and ended the 
scene, he holding one hand, she pressing a scented 
handkerchief to her eyes with the other. She 
was really quite happy in a sort of fiercely in¬ 
dignant fashion. 

I suppose every husband tells his wife some 
such yarn as this. And he usually gets away with 
it. He may even believe it for all I know, al¬ 
though there are some millions of other hus¬ 
bands controverting his testimony by the same 
flattery to their respective wives. 

124 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


We have biographies of great women, even if 
they are bad ones. But I doubt if there is a 
single biography to be found of a merely good 
woman, because for some reason goodness does 
not distinguish women, and for another reason, 
while it may make them useful, dependable and 
absolutely essential to others, it does not make 
them sufficiently interesting to hold the reader’s 
attention or the world’s attention. You never 
heard of one being knighted for virtue. It is not 
done. You never saw a monument raised to just 
one woman who was invincibly good and faithful 
in the discharge of her intimate private duties as 
a wife or a mother. She must do something pub¬ 
licly, like leading a reform or creating a disturb¬ 
ance. 

And the only feminine autobiographies I have 
read were written by women who should not have 
done so. They have been without exception writ¬ 
ten by some ignobly good woman, with every 
mean and detestable use of her virtues at the ex¬ 
pense of other people, or they were indecent ex¬ 
posures of moral degeneracy and neurasthenic dis¬ 
orders. Good women cannot write their auto¬ 
biographies. The poor things are inarticulate. 
They lack the egocentricity essential for such a 

125 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


performance. This statement stands, even if the 
author eventually publishes some such looking- 
glass of herself. 

I would not discourage any woman who is pre¬ 
paring to make of herself a sacrifice wholly ac¬ 
ceptable to her husband and family, but it is my 
honest conviction that it will not pay her in this 
present world. And that she will wind up like 
the sundown saint of herself, respected, held in 
affectionate regard, maybe, but unhonored and 
unsung. So go ahead with your sacrifice, but do 
not complain about it. Men, as well as gods, 
accept sacrifices, but they rarely ever return the 
compliment. 

Helen Cutter belonged to this class. The first 
years of her marriage passed happily enough. 
She was not too good. She was often exacting 
in her pretty, soft, white way. But she always 
produced this impression of whiteness and sim¬ 
plicity. She was in the confidence of her hus¬ 
band to this extent, she knew how rapidly he was 
forging ahead in business. She marveled at the 
swiftness with which he turned over money and 
doubled it. And she never questioned his 
methods. 

Then the time came when business engrossed 
him to the exclusion of every other interest. He 

126 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


was obliged to make frequent trips to money 
markets in the East and the West. He began to 
be hurried, preoccupied, irritable. 

This is the history of many successful men in 
the married relation. It usually results in the 
wife’s finding another life of her own, in her chil¬ 
dren, in social diversions or some other activity. 
Cutter wished for this solution for his wife. He 
provided her amply with funds. But it seemed 
that she did not know how to spend money fool¬ 
ishly. She was invincibly moral about every¬ 
thing. She performed her tea-party duties at 
regular intervals without any distinction as a 
hostess, paid a few calls and remained a “home 
body.” 

She perceived the change in her husband. He 
was not now the man she had married. He was 
no longer even of her class. She could not keep 
up with him. She knew that she was not even 
within speaking distance of him, because she could 
not talk of the things he talked about. Finances, 
big enterprises, the plays in New York, life in 
New York. The one bond which might have held 
them did not exist. She had no children. 


127 


CHAPTER XI 


A trivial circumstance finally enlightened her 
as to the length and breadth of the distance be¬ 
tween them. 

One morning at the breakfast table Cutter 
looked at his wife appraisingly. They had been 
married eleven years. She was still pretty, but 
it was a beauty maturing into a sort of serenity, 
no vivacity. She had, in fact, a noble look. 
Stupid women do frequently get it. He had 
long since made up his mind that Helen was, 
to say the least of it, mentally prismatic. She 
had no elasticity of charm. Still he resolved to 
risk her. 

“Helen, Shippen gets in from New York this 
afternoon. I want to bring him out here for 
dinner. Do you think you can manage it?” he 
asked. 

“The dinner? Why, yes, of course, George,” 
she replied, having no doubt about being able to 
manage a dinner. This Mr. Shippen could not 
possibly be more exacting than George was him¬ 
self. 


128 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“He is coming down to look at that pyrites 
mine I want to sell. We are going to get into 
this war, and the Government is bound to need 
pyrites. Shippen is tremendously rich, something 
of a sport, I imagine. He was rather nice to me 
when I was in New York last month, introduced 
me to a lot of men I need to know,” he explained. 
“So you must help me out by doing your best,” 
he added significantly. 

“I will, dear,” she assured him, still unper¬ 
turbed. 

This serene confidence disturbed him. He 
doubted if she could put across the simplest meal 
in a correct manner. During the lifetime of his 
mother, his father had entertained such out-of- 
town guests; but these excellent parents had been 
dead for years. He was obliged to fall back on 
Helen. 

“You must do your best and look your best. 
You are lovely, you know.” 

“Am IT’ she asked, not coquettishly, but as if 
this was an opportunity to assure herself about 
something which was causing her anxiety. 

“Yes, of course, you are,” he returned in a 
matter-of-fact tone. This was no time to get 
personal with his wife. He wanted her to do 
something and do it well. 

129 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Wear that gown I bought you from Madame 
Lily’s,” hesuggested. 

“Oh! must I*?” she exclaimed as if she asked, 
Would it be as bad as that? 

“The very thing, and wear the necklace.” 

She said she would, but what she thought was 
that if she must dress like this she could not stay 
in the kitchen and help Maria with the dinner, 
and Maria was not to be trusted. She was “heavy 
handed” when it came to salt, for example. Her 
chief concern was for the dinner, not herself. 
She always missed her cue. 

Nevertheless, Shippen had the shock of his 
swift life when he was presented to Mrs. Cutter 
that evening. 

The weather was very cold. A bright fire 
burned in the grate. A chandelier of four lights 
overhead left scarcely a shadow in this cheap little 
parlor. Everything in it glared. The white 
walls stared you out of countenance. The golden- 
oak piano turned a broadside of yellow brilliance 
across the flowered rug. The whatnot showed off. 
The spindle-back sofa fairly twinkled varnish. 
Inanimate things can sometimes produce the im¬ 
pression of tittering excitement. The furniture 
in this pop-eyed room seemed to be expecting 
company. Only the two mahogany armchairs on 

130 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


either side of the fireplace preserved their gravity 
and indifference, as if they had been born and 
bred to be sat in by the best people. 

Shippen saw all this at a glance; at least he 
felt it without knowing what ailed him. Later 
he was to quail in a sort of artistic anguish be¬ 
neath the cold, calm, crayon gaze of that excel¬ 
lent carpenter, the late Sam Adams, whose por¬ 
trait still hung above the mantel. And he was 
to feel the colder, grimmer crayon eyes of the 
late Mrs. Mary Adams piercing him between the 
shoulder blades from the opposite wall. But that 
which riveted his attention this first moment when 
he entered the room with Cutter was Mrs. Cutter. 

She stood on the rug before the fire, a slim 
figure, but not tall. She was wearing a cloth gown 
of the palest rose lavender, the bodice cut low, 
fitting close to her white shoulders, lace on it 
somewhere like a mist, a wildly disheveled bow of 
twisted black velvet that seemed to strike at him, 
it was so vivid by contrast with all this gem pale¬ 
ness of color. A necklace of opals, very small and 
bound together by the thinnest thread of gold, 
with a pendant lay upon her breast. Her pale 
blond hair was dressed simply, bound about her 
head like piety, not a crown. No color in her 
skin, only the soft pink lips, sweetened somehow 

131 


4 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

by that pointed flute in the upper lip, long sweep¬ 
ing brows, darker than her hair, spread like slen¬ 
der wings above the wide open blue eyes, seeing 
all things gravely, neither asking nor giving con- 
Adences. 

“This is Mr. Shippen, Helen. My wife, Ship- 
pen,” George finished cheerfully. 

He had made a hasty survey of Helen. She 
would do, he decided, if only she would go, 
move off, say the right thing. 

Helen offered her hand. She was glad to meet 
Mr. Shippen. 

He bowed over this hand, very glad, and so 
forth and so on. 

She said something about the weather; he did 
not notice what she said nor what he answered; 
something about the same weather of course. But 
whatever he said had not released him from her 
gaze. She kept him covered. Cutter had joined 
in with his feelings and opinion on the weather. 
What was said made no difference. Shippen had 
to keep his eyes down or running along the floor, 
not on Mrs. Cutter. Men do that when they are 
startled or ill at ease with a woman, if they are 
uncertain about where to place her in the category 
of her sex. Shippen was very uncertain on this 
point. He had seen many a woman better 

132 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


gowned, more beautiful, but never had he seen 
one with this winged look. 

“Are we late?” Cutter asked, addressing his 
wife. 

“No,” she answered briefly, as if words were 
an item with her. 

“Well, anyhow we are hungry,” he laughed. 
“Took Shippen out for a little winter golf. Links 
rotten after all this rain. No game. All we got 
was an appetite.” 

Shippen glanced at Cutter. For the first time 
he recognized Cutter. Smart fellow, pipping his 
village shell. But, good heaven, this room! 
Might have got further than this in his scenery. 

He went on catching impressions. He felt very 
keen. It occurred to him suddenly that Cutter’s 
wife was responsible for the room. This fellow 
who could fly like a kite in the markets couldn’t 
fly here or move or change anything. Odd situa¬ 
tion. If this was her taste in house furnishing, 
who chose her frock for her? She was dressed 
like a fashionable woman, and she looked like a 
madonna; not virginal, but awfully still like the 
image of something immortally removed. She 
gave him a queer feeling. Still it was distinctly 
a sensation; he handed it to her for that. 

All this time Cutter was talking like a man 

133 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


covering some kind of breach, laughing at the end 
of every sentence. He heard himself making re¬ 
plies, also laughing. Nothing from Mrs. Cutter. 
He looked across at her seated in the other ma¬ 
hogany chair, and dropped his eyes. Her gaze 
was still fixed on him, no shadow of a smile on 
her face. He understood why instantly. This 
was not mirth, this was laughter he and Cutter 
were executing as people do when they make con¬ 
versation. He was amazed at this woman’s inde¬ 
pendence. She had nothing to say and said it in 
silence. She heard nothing amusing, therefore 
she was not smiling. She was not even embar¬ 
rassed. 

It all depends upon your experience and angle 
of vision what you see in another person. This 
is why your husband may discover that some other 
woman understands him better than you do. She 
knows him better than you do because she knows 
more about men than you do. And if there is 
anything that weakens the moral knees of a man 
quicker even than strong drink, it is to feel the 
soothing flattery of being better understood by 
another woman. 

Precisely in this way Shippen understood 
Helen, and knew perfectly that Cutter was not 
the man who could do it. She was invincible, he 

134 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


saw that; stupid, he saw that. And he was 
enough of a connoisseur in this matter to realize 
that intelligence would sully this lovely thing. 
Merriment would be a facial transgression. She 
was that rare and most mysterious of all crea¬ 
tures, a simply good woman without the self- 
consciousness they usually feel in their virtues. 

He kept on with these reflections during din¬ 
ner, which was served presently. He had no idea 
what kind of dinner it was. He was assembling 
plans for a speculation. He had been successful 
in many lines besides those involving money. 

“You come to New York occasionally, don’t 
you, Mrs. Cutter?” he asked, endeavoring to 
engage her in conversation. 

“Not that often. I have been there only once,” 
she told him with a faint smile. She had referred 
to her wedding journey without naming it. At 
that time she and George had spent a week in 
New York. 

“You liked it, of course?” Shippen went on. 

“It is like a book with too many pages, too 
many illustrations, too many quotations, isn’t it?” 
she evaded. 

Shippen threw back his handsome black head 
and laughed. 

Cutter shot a bright glance at his wife and 

135 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


joined in this applause. He had no idea she could 
think anything as good as that to say. And she 
could not have done so if he had asked the ques¬ 
tion. 

“What I mean is that one must live there a long 
time before he could know whether he liked it or 
not,” she explained. 

“Well, I think you would,” he answered, mean¬ 
ing some flattery which she did not get. 

Having said so much, she had nothing else to 
say. The two men went on with this discussion 
of New York life. Cutter was determined to 
let Shippen know that he was no stranger to it 
—old stuff, such as brokers and buyers get, under 
the impression that they are bounding up the so¬ 
cial ladder of the great metropolis. Shippen 
heard him give quite frankly his cafe experiences, 
not omitting soubrettes. No harm in what he was 
telling, of course, but as a rule men didn’t do it 
at home. 

Once or twice he glanced at Mrs. Cutter, ready 
to come to heel, change the subject if he saw the 
faintest shade of annoyance on her face. There 
was no shade there at all, only a calm, clear look. 
And this look was fixed on him as if he were a 
page she read out of the book of this city. Ap¬ 
parently she was indifferent to what Cutter was 

136 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


saying. He decided that she was not jealous of 
her husband. 

He wondered if Cutter had the least concep¬ 
tion of the kind of woman his wife was. He 
thought not. Some day she would stand immov¬ 
able in the way of his ambitions, he decided. In 
that case what would Cutter do 4 ? This was— 
well, it might prove very interesting. He went on 
speculating personally along this line. 

The reason why so many men try to climb 
Mount Everest is because they cannot do it. Let 
even one reach the summit, and that exalted peak 
has fallen into the hands of the tame geographers 
and scientists. It becomes a business then, not an 
adventure, to chart those terrific altitudes. For 
the same reason the most attractive woman to men 
is the unattainable woman. Shippen found Mrs. 
Cutter attractive. He did not analyze the reason 
why. It was not her beauty. He had had suc¬ 
cess with far more beautiful women. He doubted 
his success here. Heavens! To find a woman 
who could not be won! What an adventure. 
That steady, unrevealing gaze in her blue eyes— 
what did it conceal? What did she know? He 
doubted if she knew anything. That was it; she 
was something real, not built up out of little 
knowledges, little virtues, spiced with little vices, 

137 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

and finished like her furniture with the varnish of 
feminine charms. What a noble change from the 
skittish kittens and the secret viragoes and the 
mercenary starlings he had known. 

It is astonishing what terrible things a man can 
be thinking, while he looks at you frankly and 
laughs honestly and takes your food like a 
brother. Certainly Cutter would have been aston¬ 
ished if he had known what was passing through 
the mind of his guest as they talked and laughed 
together at this table. But it is a question if 
Helen would have been moved. She did not 
know this man, but she felt him like a darkness, 
in no way personal to her, but there, with George 
frisking around like an ambitious spark in this 
blackness. She was thinking of George chiefly, 
interpreting him according to Shippen. It was a 
fearful experience, and no one suspected her pain, 
because a woman can dig her own grave and step 
down into it behind the look and the smile and 
the duty she gives you, and it may be years be¬ 
fore you discover that she is gone. 

All this is put in for the emotional reader who 
knows it is the truth, and has probably felt the 
sod above herself, even while she is sadly dress¬ 
ing beautifully for an evening’s pleasure with a 
husband who has slain her or a lover whose per- 

138 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


fidy has brought on these private obsequies. But 
all such truth is unhealthy, like the failure of 
courage in invalids. And in this particular I 
warn you that the fate of Helen differs from your 
own. She died a few times, as the most valorous 
women do; but she had a sublime instinct for 
surviving these incidental passings. 

Shortly after dinner Cutter took Shippen back 
to his hotel. They had some affairs to discuss 
further before he should leave on the early morn¬ 
ing train. Cutter explained to Helen, because this 
was unusual. It was his invariable habit to spend 
his evenings at home. He was a good husband, 
according to the strictest law of the scribes and 
Pharisees, so to speak. What I mean is that he 
was literally faithful to his wife, though you may 
have suspected to the contrary. This is not the 
author’s fault, but due to the evil culturing of 
your own mind. A man may be faithful to his 
wife, and at the same time frisk through the night 
life of a place like New York. He may be doing 
nothing worse than taking a whiff and an eyeful 
of the naughty world, getting something to talk 
about to the other fellows when he comes home. 
It is silly, but not wicked, as you are inclined to 
believe. I do not know why it is that so many 
respectable women are disposed to suspect the 

139 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


worst where men are concerned; but it is a fact 
which even their pastors will not deny. 

When Cutter came in that night Helen had re¬ 
tired. He turned on the light. “Asleep, my 
dear*?” he asked. 

“No,” she replied in that tone a woman has 
when her voice sounds like the nice, small voice 
of your conscience. 

He came and sat down on the side of the bed, 
regarded her cheerfully, like the messenger of 
good tidings. She lay very flat, hands folded 
across her breast, face in repose, no expression, 
eyes wide open, a state of self-consciousness bor¬ 
dering onto unconsciousness which women some¬ 
times sink into as a sort of last ditch. 

Cutter was so elated about something he did 
not observe that his wife was dying momentarily. 
He wanted to talk. He had something to tell 
her. “You were splendid to-night, Helen,” he 
began. 

She revived sufficiently to ask him if the dinner 
was “all right.” 

“Dinner!” he exclaimed. “I scarcely noticed 
what we had to eat. You took the shine off the 
dinner. You were stunning. Means a lot to a 
man for his wife to—make good; sets him up. 
Shippen was impressed, I can tell you that.” 

140 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Shippen! She did not speak the name, but her 
glance, slowly turned on him, meant it. 

“How did you like him?” he wanted to know. 

“I did not like him,” she answered distinctly. 

He stared at her. Her respiration was the 
same; her eyes coldly impersonal. He sprang to 
his feet, kicked off his shoes, flung off his clothes, 
snapped off the light and retired to the bitter frost 
of that bed. He lay flat, clinched his hands across 
his breast and worked his toes as if these toes 
were the claws of a particularly savage beast. 
His chest rose and fell like bellows. His red 
brown eyes snapped in the dark. 

Helen was the antidote for success, he reflected 
furiously. She was the medicine he had to take, 
a depressant that kept him down when he might 
have been up. Just let him get the wind in his 
sails, and she reefed him every time. He had 
been patient, leaving her to have her own way 
when it was not his way. Hadn’t he lived in his 
own house with those blamed Adams pictures 
glaring at him for nine years? Yet he had en¬ 
dured them for Helen’s sake. And the druggets, 
and the very cast-off teacups of Helen’s family. 

Right now he was lying in old Mrs. Adams’ 
bed and had done so for nine years, when he much 
preferred his own bed. He had tried to bring 

141 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Helen out, and she would not be moved. He had 
tried to dress her according to her station in life, 
and she would not be dressed. He had humored 
her in everything. But now when he had an op¬ 
portunity, a big chance which he could not take 
without her, she planted her feet as usual. She 
obstructed him at every turn. She didn’t like 
Shippen. That showed which way the wind 
would blow when he told her. And he had to 
tell her. He could not move hand or foot with¬ 
out her. But, by heaven! if she didn’t come 
across this time— 

“George,” came a voice from the adjacent 
pillow. 

“Umph!” he answered, startled out of finishing 
that threat he was about to think. 

“You asked me, or I should not have told you 
what I think of Mr. Shippen. But since you want 
to know—” 

“I don’t want to know. I am trying to get a 
little sleep. I’m tired,” he interrupted. 

“But since you ask,” she went on, “I think 
he is horrible. He reminds me of the powers and 
principalities of darkness. He made my flesh 
creep—” 

“For the love of peace, Helen, stop. You know 
absolutely nothing about him.” 

142 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Yes, I do.” 

“What*?” 

“I know that he is wicked.” 

“How do you know*?” 

“I feel it.” 

He snorted and turned over. He slept that 
night with his back to this slanderer, who did 
not sleep at all. 


143 


CHAPTER XII 


The next day George Cutter's spirits had re¬ 
vived and with them a certain hope. He resolved 
to have it oat with Helen. She was not reason¬ 
able. Few women were, but he knew that she 
loved him. He might count on that. 

In the evening after dinner they sat before the 
fire in the parlor. Helen wore a dark dress, 
plain, durable, unbecoming. He considered this 
dress, the woman in it, with a coolly impartial eye. 
His heart failed him. He doubted if she could 
pull it off if she would. If, for example, she 
could be made to realize the importance of dress¬ 
ing handsomely and extravagantly even 7 day. If 
she could be induced to live the life she would 
have to live. He admitted it was a sort of puppet 

existence. But as necessary to his success as the 

* 

dummies in a shop window are to advertise the 
owner's trade. Ten thousand women did it all 
the time, liked it. Still Helen was not one of 
them. She was removed by nature, even* in- 
stinct, from that class. He was half a mind to 
give up the whole thing. At this moment, Helen 

144 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


looked across at him. There was a hint of tears 
in her eyes, a fugitive smile on her lips as if this 
smile pleaded with him for a certain forgiveness. 

He laughed. He stood up and took her in his 
arms. 

“Am I all right now, George?” she asked, as if 
she had been shriven by this embrace. 

“Absolutely,” he assured her. 

They sat down. Helen sighed, being now full 
of that sad peace which makes sighs. 

“The trouble with you is, dear, that you are 
never wrong. That cuts you out of life. We 
who are in the thick of it must be a little wrong,” 
he explained. 

“I suppose so,” she agreed. 

“Not so rigid. We can't be,” he said. 

She agreed to that also. 

“If you could be a little less perfect, it would 
help me a lot.” 

She smiled, implying that in that case she was 
in a position to help him. But what could she 
do? She had often felt how little service she was. 

Her meekness intrigued him. “How would you 
like to live in New York?” he asked. 

“I would not like it,” she answered after a 
pause. 

He might have known what her answer would 

145 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


be, Cutter reflected bitterly. His face reddened. 
His anger was rising. 

“Why? Do you want to live there?” she 
asked, feeling this silence directed against her. 

“Oh, it makes no difference what I want, be¬ 
cause if we lived on separate planets you could 
not differ more widely than you do from my way 
of life and my desires, my very needs,” he ex¬ 
claimed. 

This was unjust, she knew. Still she felt 
guilty. 

“George, I can’t pretend that I should like to 
live in New York, but if you want to go there, 
I will go. I must not stand ever in the way of 
your success.” 

He sat in brooding, bitter silence, staring into 
the Are. 

“We might live very quietly; at least I could, 
couldn’t I?” she asked timidly, ready to make 
every other concession. 

“No; you could not. You’d have to play the 
game as other women do. You would not do 
that. You—your whole mind is against the idea 

you would not adjust yourself. You would not 
even try to adjust yourself to the world as it is. 
You want to make one yourself, six hundred feet 
long and seven hundred feet wide with this house 

146 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

r 

in the middle of it. You have done it. Look at 
it,” he exclaimed, with a glance that swept this 
room like a conflagration. 

This was the first time she had suspected that 
the parlor was not furnished according to his lik¬ 
ing. She was that simple, and he had been that 
patient. 

“You have created a place to live in where no¬ 
body can live except as you do,” he went on. 

He took no notice of the fact that she sat with 
one hand on her breast, staring at him with a look 
of mortal pain. 

“Well, I will be more considerate of you than 
you can be of me, Helen,” he began again. “We 
will drop the idea of going to New York. You 
like this place. I might be contented here my¬ 
self, if I had nothing to do except keep it. But 
I have my business, a man’s name and reputation 
to make. I will stay here when my affairs don’t 
require me to be somewhere else. You under¬ 
stand,” giving her an eye thrust. 

“Yes,” she answered, meeting this thrust stead¬ 
ily. She was dying to her happiness, not without 
reproach, but without fear. 

He crossed his legs and swung his foot after 
this deed. He did not tell her that Shippen had 
offered him a partnership in a big business the 

147 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

night before. In view of her unreasonable preju¬ 
dice against Shippen, this information would only 
have furnished her with stronger objections to his 
plans. 

The point was that she had failed him as a 
helpmate in the career he had chosen. He pur¬ 
posed to alter his course accordingly. He would 
do the square thing by her. She was his wife. 
He had that affection for her; but she should not 
block his way. He meant to get on with her or 
—without her. Other men did. He knew suc¬ 
cessful men in New York, whose wives spent half 
their time in Europe or somewhere else. He sup¬ 
posed he might do better than that. The bank in 
Shannon would require a good deal of his time. 
He would come home occasionally. He must 
spend a few days out of every month there. 

This was the end. Helen sensed it. She saw 
his side of the situation. She had failed her hus¬ 
band. She had been obliged to do so. He had 
never expressed the least regret because she had 
not borne children, but she knew that if they had 
had children, this would have made all the dif¬ 
ference. She supposed she herself might have 
been a different sort of woman if she could have 
been a mother. Her influence as a wife had never 
reached beyond the door of their home. Now she 

148 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

had failed him at this upward turn in his career. 

She had been a good wife to him according to 
the Scriptures, but he needed another kind of 
wife, one who could fill a public position, a wife 
according to the world. She grasped this fact 
clearly, held it before her, regarded it with re¬ 
markable intelligence during a strictly private 
interview she had with herself on this subject 
some time the next day. She wondered how 
many wives combined the two offices which 
George required of her. If you were the social 
official of his home, if you “played the game,” 
as he called it, how could you be—well, the kind 
of wife she had been to George? 

She thought of Shippen in connection with this 
reflection. She could not have told why, but she 
did. She was not so stupid as not to suspect that 
Shippen had something to do with this sudden 
desire that George had to live in New York. 
“Playing the game” meant coming in constant 
contact with men like Shippen, women like the 
women they had discussed that night at dinner— 
Shippen and soubrettes; somebody’s wife they 
had seen in a cafe with a man who was not her 
husband and whom they had discussed with a 
curious sort of grinning admiration, as if this 
lady was a lady to be reckoned with. 

149 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Helen was wrong, of course, in the picture she 
drew of the game the worldly wife must play. 
But there was this much sanity in her point of 
view: Such a wife cannot always choose her part¬ 
ner nor the card she must play. It is a skin game, 
matrimonially speaking, and sometimes the one 
skinned is the husband, more frequently it is the 
wife, even if it is only the gossips who do the 
skinning. 

Helen made her way through such reflections 
as these, not as I have written them down in 
words, but as one walking through the dark in a 
dangerous place, with cautious steps and out¬ 
stretched hands, feeling the edges of strange 
abysses with her feet, touching unknown things 
that might be alive with reptilian life. 

The private mental life of all women, good or 
bad, is usually morbid, consisting of thoughts or 
speculations which bring an emotional crisis and 
leave them in fears and tears more frequently than 
we can believe, judging by the faces they show. 

Helen passed at this time through some such 
crisis. She was not changed by it, because women 
of that sort are the “amens” of their sex. But 
she was confirmed. She remembered what George 
had said long ago about this belief in the freedom 
of love. She had often recalled it, always with 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


a pang of terror. If she had ever been jealous 
of him, it was in this indefinite way. Now the 
way that led to such love seemed to widen before 
her eyes. 

She was alone in her room, sitting on the side 
of her bed during this scene with herself. You 
know by your own experience, if you are a mar¬ 
ried woman, that you always sit on the side of 
your bed when you are dramatizing the sadder 
prospects of going on doing your duty by this 
husband—or of not doing it. You chose the bed 
instead of a chair because of a potential sense of 
prostration. You prepare yourself to fall back 
in a stonn of tears or to sink upon your knees in 
prayer for strength to bear this “cross.'’ The 
more modern woman is said frequently to rise 
unshriven, stride majestically across the room and 
stare at her own proudly rebellious reflection in 
the mirror. 

Helen did none of these things. She simply 
sat there, dry-eyed, unprayerful, not rebellious, 
reviewing the future. This can be done with 
amazing vividness, because the future is always a 
repetition and development of the past. Then she 
made a resolution. It was that later secret mar¬ 
riage vow a wife sometimes takes after she is ac¬ 
quainted with the deflation and vicissitudes of this 

151 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


relation. Whatever happened, she would be a 
good and dutiful wife to George. She would be 
patient. Nothing should move her to reproach 
him. Thus she abandoned her rights and self- 
respect. I do not say that she ought to have done 
this; I doubt it; but the fact remains that many 
women do it. And in the end they frequently 
become sanctuaries for disgracefully defeated hus¬ 
bands. But to say so is not to recommend the 
practice. My task is to show how it worked out 
in this instance. And you are warned therefore 
that a sanctuary may become a very fine edifice, 
even smacking a little of worldly grandeur. 


/ 


CHAPTER XIII 

The little pale image of goodness so frequently 
seen sitting in Cutter’s car before the bank wait¬ 
ing for him around five o’clock in the afternoon 
was what remained of the original Helen two 
years after he had relinquished his plan to live in 
New York. 

Keeping an entirely good resolution may be 
strengthening to character, but it is fearfully 
damaging to feminine beauty. For one thing such 
women lose the sense of clothes. Helen had 
known how to dress in the happy, wild-rose 
period of her youth; but how can you keep up the 
flaunting, flowing sweetness of your draperies 
when you are no longer a girl to be won, but 
have become a wife who has been reduced to her 
duties and her virtues*? 

Still, things had not been as bad for her as 
she had expected they would be. George was 
away from home now much of the time. He had 
interests in New York and spent at least a part 
of every month there. But she heard from him 
regularly, usually a wire, sometimes a brief note. 
When he was at home, it was the same old rou- 

153 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

tine, except that he spent more time at the golf 
and country club. 

The truth was that Helen got on his nerves 
frightfully with her silence and dutifulness and 
patience. The impeccable wife is a difficult 
proposition, if you tackle it. Cutter instinctively 
avoided the issue. He accepted Helen for this 
awfully “better” woman than he had bargained 
for. There was none of that human “worse” in 
her, so amply provided for in the marriage cere* 
mony, with which to vary the monotony of their 
life together. Often he wished for a stormy scene, 
such as by nature married people are entitled to 
have. If he was irritable, she left him alone. If 
he was calm, she would come and sit and sew a 
fine seam in a sweet silence that was perfectly 
maddening. If he flung the paper he was read¬ 
ing on the floor, slammed his feet down and 
groaned, she would look up at him, then drop her 
eyes once more to this seam—or she would rise 
and leave the room noiselessly. 

Good heavens! He could not stand it, mean¬ 
ing “her.” Why didn’t she complain that he neg¬ 
lected her*? Why didn’t she say something, show 
some spirit*? Why didn’t she appeal to his con¬ 
science 4 ? That was what a wife was for—one 
thing, at least. If she would only show some 

154 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


fight, he might regain control of himself; as it 
was, he was slipping. Why couldn’t she see that 
and stop him? He really wanted to slow up; but 
how was a man to do it with his wife letting him 
go like this? 

Cutter was the kind of man who would even¬ 
tually account for his transgression by saying if 
he had married another sort of woman he might 
have been a better man. In that case, you may 
be sure, if his wife had married a totally different 
kind of man, she would have been a happier 
woman. 

Meanwhile Helen was prepared for the worst. 
This is a terrific preparation, but sometimes the 
only one a woman can make; and it leaves her 
in a singularly placid state of mind. If she had 
understood the situation, she might have behaved 
differently. But she did not understand Cutter. 

The woman who knows only one man never 
knows much about him. To understand a hus¬ 
band, you must do a lot of collateral reading of 
mankind. He is all of them, from the best to the 
worst. You are not so apt then to be mystified 
by his various manifestations. And if you have 
any sense of the proper courage of your sex, 
you will act according to his symptoms, not your 
own sanity, even if it is to burst into tears 

155 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


and cry: “Undone! Undone! Oh, my God!” 

He will fall for it and react every time; be¬ 
cause God, upon whom you have just called, no 
doubt having your emergencies in view, has 
created men so that almost without exception they 
have no defense against a weeping woman. 

At the same time it is the worst possible gov¬ 
erning principle not to vary your tears with laugh¬ 
ter, tyranny and some sort of lovely unreasonable¬ 
ness. Men cannot endure a perfectly logical and 
sane woman. She is too much like a petticoated 
edition of themselves. They want action. You 
must keep your ball rolling, you must convince 
your husband of your mental inferiority and of 
your tender superiority. 

Helen, poor girl, was not that much smarter 
than her husband. She was straight. She lacked 
the dearer deviousness of her sex, and, within 
her limits, was utterly all to the good Whether 
a state of unmitigated morality is profitable is a 
thing I have always wanted to know. And in the 
course of a long life, the only answer I have ever 
been able to find is that any state bordering on 
immorality, or unmoralness, is sure to prove un¬ 
profitable. The difference between these two 
equations offered the only light at the time on 
Helen’s future. 


156 


CHAPTER XIV 


In April of 1917 this country joined the Allies 
in the Great War. The nation was transfigured 
with that spiritual and sacrificial emotion which 
invariably follows the sending of vast armies of 
men to be slain. The profits on patriotism were 
enormous for those who knew how to do business 
at the expense of the people. Cutter was one of 
these eminently sane profiteers. He had doubled 
his fortune during the first few months. He re¬ 
mained in New York most of the time. He had 
been away from home the whole of July. 

One morning early in August he arrived at the 
door of his own house in Shannon. Helen had 
not expected him. She was flustered. Breakfast 
had been served, but she would have another 
breakfast prepared at once. 

No, George explained briefly, he had had some¬ 
thing on the train; she was not to trouble her¬ 
self on his account. 

This consideration was unusual. Well, he 
must go in and lie down; she knew he must be 
worn out, Helen suggested. 

157 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


No, he was not tired; and no, he would not go 
in and lie down. 

He behaved like a visitor in the house. But 
he remained at home all day, puttering about the 
house and garden with a curious gentle air. After 
lunch he took a nap on the sofa in the parlor. 
To Helen’s question as to whether he would go 
out for some golf as usual, he had replied that 
he would not play golf and that she might have an 
early dinner. Afterwards she remembered a faint 
embarrassment in his manner during the whole 
of this day, as if it were an effort to talk or reveal 
the simplest word of himself. But at the time 
Helen was pleased without questioning why he 
was behaving in this vaguely domestic fashion. 

Late in the afternoon she had followed him 
into the garden, seated herself on a bench there 
with her hands folded—merely present, you un¬ 
derstand. Cutter continued to pace slowly back 
and forth along the walk. Helen observed him 
gently. She thought he looked spent. She was 
glad he was taking the day off; this was all she 
thought about that. 

Now and again Cutter regarded his wife with a 
sort of remorseful tenderness. He was experienc¬ 
ing one of those futile reactions a bad man has 
toward ineffable goodness when he knows he is 

158 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


about to be rid of the burden and reproach of it. 
Presently he came and sat down beside her in 
the sweet, unaccusing silence she always made for 
him. 

Her skin was still very fair, her hair darker, 
with golden lights, her brows much darker, the 
same blue eyes, white lidded. Strange he had 
never noticed before that the clothes she wore 
were like her—this grave little frock she was 
wearing now, white, sheer, like a veil, long pretty 
sleeves, a kind little waist with darts in it to fit 
her figure. Who but Helen would ever think 
of taking up darts in her bodice this year when 
every other woman was fluffing herself*? He 
smiled at this, but the humor of his face was 
neither intimate nor affectionate. It was a sort 
of grinning footnote to Helen’s character. 

He began presently to feel the old irritation at 
her silence. He halted, dropped down on the 
bench beside her, but at the other end, hung him¬ 
self by one elbow over the back of it, crossed his 
legs and addressed her with a question which he 
frequently used like a key to turn in the lock of 
his wife’s silence. 

“Helen, if you were about to say anything, 
what would you say?” he asked. 

“I was just thinking,” she answered, implying 

159 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


that she preferred not to publish these thoughts 
in speech. 

But he wanted to know. His manner was that 
of a husband who wanted to start something. 

“If we had children,” she began, looking at 
him, then away from him, “I was wondering what 
they would be doing now.” 

His eyes widened over her, but she did not feel 
this amazement. Her own gaze appeared to be 
trailing these children among the flowers in this 
garden. 

“I often think of them,” she went on. “Our 
son—I always expected the first one to be a son 
—he should be quite a lad now. What do boys 
of fourteen do at this hour of the day*?” regarding 
him with a sort of dreaming seriousness. 

He made no reply. He had slumped; with 
lowered lids he was staring at the graveled walk 
in front of this bench. 

“But the two little girls, much younger, would 
be here in the garden with us. Isn’t it strange, I 
always know what they would be doing, but not 
the boy. I have seen them in my heart like bright 
images in a mirror; I have heard them laugh many 
a time.” 

He was appalled. Never before had he known 

160 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Helen to talk like this. Why was she doing it 4 ? 
Did she knew what was in his mind 4 ? Was she 
deliberately torturing him 4 ? 

“Everything would have been so different if 
they had lived/’ she went on, as if she had ac¬ 
tually lost these children, “your life and mine. 
They would have changed us, our ways and our 
hopes. We should have built the house we 
planned—for them,” turning to him with a dim 
smile. 

“I suppose so,” he said, obliged to answer this 
look; “but you know I have never regretted that 
we have no children.” 

“At first you wanted them,” she reminded him. 

“But not now. It is better as it is,” he returned 
moodily. 

“No; not for me; not for either of us,” she 
sighed. 

For the first time in her life she saw tears in 
his eyes. 

“For them 4 ?” she asked putting out her hand to 
him. 

“No, for you,” he answered, drawing back from 
this hand. 

She noticed that. Her attitude toward him 
was one of submission. She did not ask herself 

161 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

now why he shrank from her touch. She knew 
nothing about the psychology of passion, its 
strange and merciless revulsions. 

“A son or a daughter would be company for 
you now, 55 he said after a pause. 

“Yes; it’s been dull, not having them with me 
now. One grows so quiet inside. It must be a 
little like dying, to be getting older and stiller all 
the time.” 

He could not bear this. He had a vision of 
what had happened to her. And now it was too 
late; she was predestined, even as he was doomed 
to his fate. . . . What follies love imposed upon 
youth! He had loved her and taken her, when 
she belonged to another kind of man, when he 
might have been happy with another kind of 
woman. Now he no longer loved her, and the 
other woman might give him pleasure, but never 
peace or happiness. . . . He supposed, after all, 
there must be something moral about happiness. 
Well, then, why had he missed happiness with 
Helen? Heaven knew she was made of every 
virtue. And he had kept his vows to her. He 
had not actually broken faith with her—yet. 

He rose and walked to the other end of the 
garden. He stood with his back to Helen, still 
thinking fiercely, like a man trying with his mind 

162 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

to break the bonds that held him. . . . What a 
horror that this woman should be his wife. Noth¬ 
ing could change that. She was not of his kind. 
She was different; that was the whole trouble. If 
she were not his wife she would be the sort of 
woman he would never notice or meet. In view 
of everything—the vision of life and society, and 
what was coming to a man of his quality—he re¬ 
garded it as remarkable that he had been so long 
faithful to her. It was stupid, silly, bucolic—the 
kind of husband he had been to this kind of wife! 

He turned. Helen was still seated on the 
bench. The sight of her filled him with irrita¬ 
tion, a sort of peevish remorse. He was going to 
have the deuce of a time getting through his next 
encounter with her. He meant to put it off to the 
last minute. Meanwhile he simply must get to 
himself, away from her. If she hung about he 
felt that he might lose control of himself. And 
he must be careful not to say anything which he 
might regret afterwards. 

He came back, stepping briskly along the walk, 
passed her as he would have passed a carpenter’s 
wife on the street and went on toward the house. 

Helen’s eyes had met him far down the walk. 
They followed him until he disappeared around 
the corner of the house. Then, as if she had re- 

163 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ceived some dreadful warning from within, she 
pressed her hand to her breast, her lips unfolded, 
her cheeks blanched, her eyes widened as if she 
beheld the very face of fear. 

What was this? George was not like himself. 
She was aware of some frightful change in him. 
There was a flare about him, something feverish, 
disheveled in his apparent neatness. She began 
to think over this day, his unexpected return that 
morning. Now that she came to think of it, there 
was no train upon which he could have arrived at 
that hour. His reserve, it was a fortification. 
She realized that now. 

She sprang up, started for the house. Some¬ 
thing had happened, something horrible. What 
was it? She must see George. She must touch 
him, speak to him. 

She found him seated on the veranda with the 
afternoon paper spread before him, held up so 
that she could see only the top of his head, not 
his face. She stood struggling with herself. She 
wished to run to him, fling herself upon his breast 
and cry out: “George, what has happened? Do 
you love me? I am your wife. Kiss me.” 

Never had she felt like this, the nameless terror, 
the beating of her heart like hammers in her 
breast. And all in this maddening moment, she 

164 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


realized that she dared not approach him. He 
did not feel like a husband, but like a stranger 
who did not belong in this house. 

She stood leaning against the spindle-legged 
pillar of the veranda and waited. She did not 
know for what, but as if she expected a blow. 
And she wanted it to fall. She wished to be put 
out of this pain as soon as possible. 

Cutter laid aside his paper, stood up, swept 
a glance this way and that as if he could not 
decide which way to retreat, then he went inside, 
and affected to be looking for a book on the 
shelves in the parlor. He heard Helen pass down 
the hall, knew that she had halted a moment in 
the doorway. He felt as if he was being trailed. 
What he wished was that she would have dinner, 
so that he could get through with this business. 
It must be done after dinner, because he could 
not sit down to the table with her afterward. 

She came back presently to fetch him to this 
meal. She wanted to cling on his arm, as she used 
to do years ago. But he evaded her, she could 
not have told how, only that if he had shouted 
to her not to touch him, she would not have been 
surer of what he meant. 

They accomplished this dinner together. Cut¬ 
ter keeping his eyes withdrawn from her, taking 

165 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


his food with that sort of foreign correctness 
which a man never practices at his own table. 
Many times they had passed through a meal in 
silence, but not a silence like this, potential, 
strained. Once Cutter caught sight of Helen’s 
hand, which was trembling. But he spared him¬ 
self the sight of her face. 

She scanned his, marked the new lines in it, the 
sullen droop to his eyes, usually so frank. She 
recalled the fact that he had not gone into their 
bedroom during this day; that he had kept to 
the public places in this house, as if it were no 
longer his house; that he had answered all her 
questions briefly; that in the garden he had drawn 
back from the touch of her hand; that now he 
was hurrying secretly to finish dining. She had 
premonitions of some unimaginable disaster which 
intimately concerned herself, but she could not 
bear to think what it was. By a forlorn faith 
many a woman receives strength to remain 
stupidly blind to her fate. Helen had some 
sort of faith that, if she kept perfectly quiet, this 
horror, whatever it was, would pass without being 
revealed to her. Then suddenly her courage 
broke. 

Cutter thrust back his chair, rose from the table 
and made for the door. 

166 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

She followed him. “George,” she cried, “what 
is it 4 ? I am frightened”; the last word keyed to 
a wail. 

They were standing where she had overtaken 
him in the hall. He took out his watch, stared 
at it. “Twenty minutes past seven. The express 
is due at eight,” he muttered with the air of a * 
man who times himself, leaving not a minute to 
spare. 

“Yes, the express is due then, but—” she began. 

“I am leaving on that train for New York,” 
he said, addressing her point-blank. 

“But, George, this is only one day for me; and 
you have been away five weeks,” she exclaimed. 

“Helen, come in here. I have something to 
tell you, and very few minutes to spare,” standing 
aside that she might precede him into the parlor. 

She went in, sat in one of the mahogany chairs 
and regarded him with that long, winged look. 
The suppressed harshness of his voice had steadied 
her. She was calm. Women can withdraw to 
some quiet corner, sit perfectly still and watch 
you condemn yourself without a tremor, although 
the moment before they may have been distracted 
by every fear. I have sometimes thought it might 
be a form of spiritual catalepsy. In any case, it 
is a very fortunate seizure. 

167 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“I am returning to New York to-night,” Cutter 
informed her, still standing as if this departure 
was imminent. “I shall make my home there in 
the future.” 

“Without me?” she asked, as if it was merely 
information she wanted. 

“Without you,” he repeated, nodding his head 
for emphasis. 

“For how long?” 

“I have resigned as president of the bank here, 
disposed of all my interests. It is not my inten¬ 
tion ever to come back to Shannon.” He did 
not look around to see how she had received this 
blow. He waited; silence, no movement, not a 
sound. “You can get a divorce. It will be easy,” 
he suggested. 

“No,” she answered. 

“I inferred that you would not now. Later, 
you may decide differently.” 

She said “No,” and she did not repeat it. 

“Meanwhile, I have provided for you. The 
house, the car, everything here is yours. The 
deeds are made to you. And I have placed securi¬ 
ties to the amount of exactly half my estate in 
the bank here. They are in your name. You 
will have an income of something more than ten 
thousand a year. It is not much; but more, I 

168 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

think, than you will care to spend.” He thrust 
two fingers into his waistcoat pocket and drew 
forth a slender key. “This is the key to your 
safety deposit box,” dropping it on the table. 
“You will need only to clip the coupons and cash 
them,” he explained. 

She had not moved, but as she listened her face 
changed to scarlet. Her eyes sparkled and were 
dry. 

There was another moment’s silence. Cutter 
picked up his hat, fumbled it. He had not ex¬ 
pected much of a scene, since Helen was so little 
given to emotional scenery. But neither had he 
been able to predict this indictment in fearful 
silence. 

“You have been a good wife, Helen. I have 
not one reproach. But things cannot go on as 
they have gone. My life and my opportunities 
lie in a broader field. I have sacrificed them too 
long already. You have not been happy here as 
my wife; but you would be miserable in New 
York as my wife. I am doing the wisest—in the 
long run the kindest—thing for both of us, giving 
you your liberty and taking mine.” 

Since she would not answer he went on 
nervously. 

“I have told no one of—our plans. I leave 

169 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


that to you also. The one thing I must have is 
the right to achieve my own life in my own way. 
I give you the same privilege and—” 

“You have only ten minutes before the train 
is due,” she interrupted. 


t 


170 


PART THREE 








PART THREE 


CHAPTER XV 

Sometimes when a man has been shot, he stands 
for the briefest moment before he falls. So 
Cutter stood, still facing the window, while the 
fatal shock passed through him. This was Helen 
who had spoken, who had reminded him of the 
time when his train left, but not his wife. He 
flirted his head around and snatched a glance at 
her. 

She was sitting very erect, not touching the 
back of her chair. The little frills on her dress 
stuck up stiffly, like the petals of a very fine 
white flower. Her cheeks were scarlet above this 
whiteness; but there were no tears. Her chin 
was lifted; her lips closed; her eyes covering him 
like a frost on a cold clear night, one of those 
still nights when the whole of Nature’s business 
is to freeze. He turned, took a step toward her, 
and did not dare take the next step. 

You may think you are making the best of a 
bad situation by ending it. You may persuade 
yourself that you are doing the square thing, 

173 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


praise yourself for behaving better than the aver¬ 
age man does in a similar predicament. Then 
suddenly something happens, a word falls upon 
your ear, or you see yourself revealed in the eye 
of your victim as a rogue, a common fellow who 
has lost his standing. 

Cutter had some such sensation as this, confused 
but devastating. He was determined to be free, 
to be no longer bound to this woman who ceased 
to appeal to him and who did not belong to the 
world he had won by success. But how was this 4 ? 
She had turned the tables on him. She was not 
only taking him at his word; she was dismissing 
him. 

I do not say that it is a queer thing about a 
man of this quality, but it is one of the abortive 
characteristics of every man of this quality, that 
he has a dog-in-the-manger instinct always toward 
the wife he discards. He expects her to remain 
cravenly faithful to him, to love and cherish him 
tearfully and patiently while he takes a whiff 
around, because, heaven bless us, isn’t that the 
nature of good and chaste women 4 ? It was. And 
yet here was Helen, instantly assuming the au¬ 
tonomous attitude of a free state. She was mak¬ 
ing no effort to hold him or save him. 

Hang it all, a man never could understand a 

174 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

woman! Here he was standing before his dis¬ 
carded wife, having done the best he could for 
her, divided his fortune with her, released her 
from her normal duties to him, while he might 
have kept this property and lived as he pleased. 
And in spite of all this, he was made to feel 
strangely humiliated, worthless and unspeakable 
to her. This was what her look and manner 
meant. Good heaven, he could not slink off de¬ 
feated like this! He had meant to go with his 
head up, not diminished. The sting of that would 
interfere with his pleasure, and he had made ex¬ 
pensive plans for a gratifying existence in New 
York. 

“What I want, Helen,” he began after this tu¬ 
multuous pause, speaking in the husband tone of 
voice, “is a sensible understanding, not a breach. 
I have provided for you as my wife should be 
provided for. If you should ever need my help 
or protection—” 

“You have barely time to make your train,” 
she interrupted, glancing at the clock and keep¬ 
ing her eye now on this clock. Her voice was not 
that of a wife, but of a lady, speaking probably 
to some agent whom she was determined to get 
out of the house before he sold her something she 
did not want and could not use. 

175 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Oh, very well, if you won’t be reasonable!” 
he exclaimed as he strode flashily past her. 

But when he reached the door he halted, looked 
back at her like an actor being put out of the 
scene and required by his lines to pause, show 
indecision, the fangs of his outraged emotions to 
the appreciative audience. But there was no au¬ 
dience to witness Cutter’s histrionic exit; only 
this neat, cool, little star of a lady with flaming 
cheeks, whose eyes remained resolutely upon the 
face of the clock. 

This man, who a while ago could not bear the 
touch of his wife’s hand, experienced a momentary 
revulsion toward his own future, to all it offered. 
He wanted to go back, take Helen in his arms, 
kiss her, feel the cleanness and sweetness of her 
goodness and nearness to him. But this was 
only momentary. He remembered the dullness 
of the years. He must buck up, he told himself 
hastily; just let him get through, escape this 
last tug of the old life and he would be a free 
man. Beneath this shrewd calculation of him¬ 
self, there was a faint premonition that he had 
better not go back in there to perform these last 
sacred rites of parting with his wife. He was 
afraid of her, as criminals fear law. 

He went out, closing the front door softly be- 

176 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


hind him. He walked hurriedly toward the 
station, disturbed and shamed by the thoughts 
his very steps seemed to toss up in his mind. For 
months, while his affair in New York was pro¬ 
gressing lightly but surely toward this crisis, he 
had dreaded this scene with Helen. He had felt 
for her, the distress and anguish she must suffer at 
the idea of losing him. He had always been as 
sure as that of her deep devotion. Now it ap¬ 
peared that he had lost Helen. He realized sud¬ 
denly that he had counted on her. Whatever he 
became, back here in that quiet house Helen 
would always be his wife. She was not the 
woman to think of a divorce. 

Well, he had been a fool not to have under¬ 
stood all along that Helen would be true to 
herself as usual, to her own convictions, whatever 
they were. And he was no longer one of these 
convictions. Life was a mess, anyhow. If a man 
failed, he had poverty pawing at his door. If 
he succeeded, made a fortune, his nature, his 
tastes and desires all changed. If only Helen had 
gone out and made a name or a fortune, achieved 
something in the world, he supposed she would 
be different too. Maybe she would have under¬ 
stood— 

The whistle of a locomotive in the distance 

177 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ended these speculations. He stepped from the 
pavement and swung with long strides down the 
railroad track to where the sleeping cars would 
stop. A moment later there was a rattle of the 
rails, a roar and a grinding of brakes. The self- 
bereaved husband climbed aboard, walked mag¬ 
nificently up the aisle of the car to his section, 
sat down, rumbled a command to the porter and 
heaved a sigh. 

He was immensely relieved. The worst of it 
was over. He had suffered some, but he was 
feeling very fit now, animated. He was done 
with the past. He was headed for New York, 
the city that whetted a man’s senses and ambi¬ 
tions. He had worked hard. The world owed 
him something for that. No place like New York 
for collecting what the world owed a fellow, and 
so on and so forth. 

The other passengers in the coach stared at 
him. People always did. Impressive looking 
man, must be somebody, they decided. No one 
would have dared drop his bag in that section and 
sit down opposite such an oppressively prosperous 
looking person, not even if he had a ticket for 
the “upper.” He would have glanced at his 
ticket, at Cutter; then he would have gone on to 
the “smoker” and arranged with the porter to 

178 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

let him know when he might climb into his berth, 
which, of course, would be after the great man 
had gone to bed in the lower one. 

This is the professional pose of the recent-rich 
man. Every one who rides in sleepers and parlor 
cars is familiar with the type. Sometimes a shoe 
drummer can put it on to perfection; but as a 
rule it is a fellow like Cutter, whose character 
and tastes and manners have been developed by 
the shock of wealth, a diseased man morally who 
receives more involuntary respect than any really 
distinguished man could bear. 

A man in mental, moral or financial distress 
will frequently pace the floor all night. But 
women never do, because the forms of grief and 
anxiety to which they are subject weaken them 
physically so that they immediately take to their 
beds in anticipation of this prostration. There¬ 
fore I hold that it is a circumstance worth men¬ 
tioning that Helen did not retire that night. She 
remained seated as he had left her until she heard 
the express go by. Then she went through the 
house turning out the lights. 

Maria, she observed by the seam of light under 
the kitchen door, was still in there. If all her 
faculties had not been concentrated on something 
else, she might have wondered why Maria was 

179 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


later than usual in clearing up after dinner. She 
passed back up the hall without so much as a 
look at her bed through the open door of her 
room, and sat down again in the same chair in 
the parlor, as you go back to the place where you 
left off in a book or to a train of thought when 
you have been interrupted. 

There could never be real darkness in Shannon 
any more, because the city had “water and elec¬ 
tric lights” now. Still the room was nearly dark, 
with only a faint reflection of the street light far 
below through the window. Helen sat like the 
ghost of herself in this dimness and silence. She 
was not thinking nor feeling. She had literally 
been drugged by the horror of this last hour. She 
was numb—past all pain. Presently she must 
return to consciousness; but she instinctively pro¬ 
longed this trance. Sometimes she changed her 
position in her chair, but never once did she lan¬ 
guish or cover her face with her hands or address 
her Father in heaven. 

Here was a woman on her mettle at last, asking 
no odds of heaven. So long as you have a hus¬ 
band, it is natural to remain in prayerful com¬ 
munication with Providence for help and guid¬ 
ance, but when your husband has abandoned you 

180 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

there is no such tearful feminine reason for en¬ 
gaging the assistance of the Almighty. You may 
do it later; but for the moment you feel quite 
alone in the universe. 


181 


CHAPTER XVI 


Sometime after midnight Helen stirred her¬ 
self, much as if she was awaking early in the 
morning with a busy day before her. She stood 
up, stared about her in the shadowy room, moved 
to the windows and pulled down all the shades. 
Then she turned on the lights. She stood di¬ 
rectly beneath the chandelier, lifted her hand 
to her head, unpinned her hair, skewed it up 
tightly and pinned it like a harsh duty on the 
back of her head. It was perfectly evident that 
she had made up her mind to do something, and 
to do it thoroughly. She had a sort of merciless 
house-cleaning expression. 

She glanced around the room, reached for two 
Cutter photographs on the mantel, removed a 
recent excellent likeness of her husband from a 
frame on the piano and left the room, carrying 
these things in her hand and the frames under 
her arm. She paused long enough in the back 
hall to lay the frames on the bottom step of the 
attic stairs. Then she went out on the back 
porch and dropped the photographs down the 
cellar steps. 

She walked briskly back to her own room. For 

182 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


the next hour she went through the house— 
drawers, closets and trunks—like the fine-toothed- 
comb of femininity, her cheeks scarlet, her lips 
primped purposefully, her eyes wide and busy, 
like the condemning eyes of a censor who is deter¬ 
mined to leave nothing that should be cut out, 
removed and destroyed. From time to time she 
issued forth, her arms laden with somebody’s 
worldly goods, obviously a man’s things, to toss 
them down the cellar stairs and return for more. 
Finally she came out with a shaving brush, the 
cord of a bathrobe and an old four-in-hand tie, 
evidently the last gleanings. 

She descended the stairs, clearing the steps as 
she went of shirts, collars, trousers, dress suits, 
overcoats, hats, brushes, shoes, slippers, pajamas, 
even buttons. She worked hurriedly, cramming 
this mass of clothing into the hot air furnace. 
She struck a match to these things, watched the 
flame creep greedily along the sleeve of a fine 
white shirt and lick the broadcloth back of a 
Tuxedo coat. Then she closed the door, went 
back upstairs, took a glance around, to make 
sure that everything was in its usual order, with¬ 
drew at last to her own room, undressed, let down 
her hair, braided it, turned out the light and went 
to bed. 


183 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


She could hear the furnace roaring below. She 
hoped all that inflammable stuff would not set 
the roof on Are. That is to say, she did not 
want to attract attention by the burning of her 
house. Otherwise she was indifferent about what 
might happen. If only she might escape notice 
for a while, until she could adjust herself to 
this horror! In spite of the closed registers, a 
strong odor of burning wool filled the house. She 
got up and raised the windows. She hoped the 
scent would be gone before Maria and Buck came 
in the morning. Then she rested, as one does 
after accomplishing something that must be done, 
no matter how unhappy one is. 

At seven o’clock she heard stirrings in the 
kitchen as usual, but no voices. This was not 
as usual, because there was always the subdued 
rumble of conversation between these two ser¬ 
vants early in the morning. But she did not 
notice it. She rang for Maria and informed her 
that she would take her breakfast in bed. She 
had never done this before; still Maria showed 
no signs of surprise. She rolled her eyes and 
sniffed the air of this house, which did not smell 
pure and undefiled. She was in such a state of 
suppressed excitement that she could barely wait 
to get back to the kitchen to whisper the news 

184 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

to Buck, who was just coming up the stairs from 
the basement where he had been to interview the 
furnace. Servants are the scavengers of all do¬ 
mesticity, especially of wrecked domesticity. 

For the next three days Helen remained in 
bed. She was not ill; but she was not able to face 
life on her feet. When your whole existence has 
been absorbed by the life of another person—his 
will, his desires and his habits have determined 
your every act—it is not so easy to have freedom 
and the pursuit of your own happiness suddenly 
thrust upon you. It is necessary to acquire new 
motives and new interests. 

Besides, Helen was obliged to face the humilia¬ 
tion of her abandonment. So, as I have said, she 
remained in bed, very quiet, very pale, very sub¬ 
missive to Maria’s ministrations. When she was 
alone, she lay for hours scarcely moving, strangely 
abstracted. No doubt we come somewhat after 
this fashion always into the next existence. One 
thing was certain: The burden of her thoughts 
was not her recreant husband, else there would 
have been tears, anguish, fever and presently the 
doctor in attendance. 

A great grief may be a great exaltation. Helen 
had this high look when Maria brought her break¬ 
fast tray in on the fourth morning. She was not 

185 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


merry; she had nothing to say; but she had ar¬ 
rived somewhere in her mind. It was obvious 
even to Maria that her mistress was about to do 
something. She wanted to know what day of the 
month this was, as a person who has been deliri¬ 
ously ill always asks about the time of day when 
he recovers consciousness. 

Maria told her that this was the fifth. 

“Of what month?” was the astonishing next 
question. 

“August, Miss Helen.” 

“Oh, yes, of course,” she returned, apparently 
gratified that this was still August. “Tell Buck 
to bring the car around at ten o’clock,” she said. 

“She’s come out of her swoon, Buck, and wants 
you to have the car ready at ten,” was the news 
Maria carried back to the kitchen. 

“Whar is we gwine?” he asked. 

“I dunno. But ef I knows Miss Helen like I 
thinks I does, they ain’t gwine to be no grass 
growin’ under your feet no time soon.” 

She was polishing Mrs. Cutter’s pumps during 
this conversation. Now she started back with 
them. She was about to lay her hand upon the 
knob of Helen’s door when she stiffened, turned 
her head to one side and listened. The sound 
of a voice issued through this door, one voice, 

186 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Helen’s. She was alone in there with her God, 
but it was obvious to Maria that this was not 
any woman’s praying voice. Neither were the 
astounding words she heard suitable for prayer. 

The fat old negress bent, laid her ear against 
the keyhole, rolled her eyes and listened. Then, 
as if she could not bear the amazement of what 
she heard, she flew back to the kitchen, caught 
hold of the astonished Buck and moaned: “Oh, 
my Lord; oh, my Lord! And her a white ’oman!” 

“What’s de matter wid you, gal 4 ?” he de¬ 
manded, shaking himself from her grasp and star¬ 
ing at her. 

She refused to tell him. She implied that such 
information as she had might cost them both their 
innocent lives, if she should repeat it. 

“You don’t know nothin’, and you ain’t heard 
nothin’,” he retorted, going out, pausing at the 
door long enough to point at the pumps which she 
still held in her hand. “You better take dem 
shoes to Miss Helen, er she’ll be tell in’ you some¬ 
thin’,” he warned her. 

Shortly after ten o’clock Mrs. George William 
Cutter appeared at the Shannon National Bank. 
She wanted to look at some papers in her safety 
deposit box, she told the cashier. 

She remained a long time closeted with this 

187 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

box. When she came out she carried a sheaf of 
coupons in her hand; and she was very pale, not 
gratified as a woman should look under these 
circumstances. Beneath the coupons there was a 
check, drawn on a New York bank for ten thou¬ 
sand dollars and signed by her husband. This 
check lay on top when she opened the box; at¬ 
tached to it was a note stating with studied brev¬ 
ity that this sum, including interest, was the 
amount she inherited from her mother’s estate, 
which he “herewith returned.” It began, “Dear 
Helen,” and was signed, “George,” with no soft¬ 
ening, affectionate prefix. 

It was this note, not the clipping of her cou¬ 
pons, that had detained Helen so long in the little 
dark anteroom of the vault. There was no date, 
but from the date on the check, she perceived that 
it had been made on the tenth of July, when 
George had been in Shannon for a week. As 
early as that, then, he had contemplated this 
separation! He was planning this spurious hon¬ 
esty, paying back the money she had advanced him 
years ago for his first adventure in stocks while 
he cheated her of his love and her dignity as a 
wife. When you think about this, it is always 
some relatively insignificant thing that excites 
your most lasting contempt. So, now Cutter fell 

188 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


to the nadir of his wife’s regard. She was obliged 
to remain in this little closet of the vault after she 
had finished everything, endeavoring to compose 
herself before she dared meet the scrutiny of the 
eyes outside. We do this so often when really 
no one takes particular notice of us. 

It was the merest accident that Arnold, the 
new president, was coming in and caught sight 
of her as she was leaving the wicket after de¬ 
positing the check and the amount of the cou¬ 
pons to her account. 

He greeted her effusively. “You are looking 
well,” he informed her. 

She knew that she was not, but she told him, 
yes, she was very well. 

“And how’s Cutter 4 ?” smiling as a man does 
when he thinks he has introduced an agreeable 
topic. 

She said that she had not heard from Mr. 
Cutter since he returned to New York. 

“Busy man! Busy man! Goes at everything 
like a house afire. You will have to take care 
of him, Mrs. Cutter, or he’ll break down, go smash 
one of these days.” 

She made no reply, merely swept her glance 
over Arnold’s shoulder toward the door. 

“We were sorry to lose him as president of 

189 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


this bank. His resignation came as a complete 
surprise. And now I suppose we shall be 
losing you. You will join him in New York, of 
course. 5 ’ 

“No , 55 she answered steadily. She had resolved 
to tell no lies and to make no explanations. 

“Keep your home here then! Well, that’s good 
news. Means Cutter’s anchored in Shannon, after 
all. He’ll be dropping in on us here at the bank 
when he comes down; be mighty glad to see 
him.” 

She said she did not know, bade him good morn¬ 
ing and went out. 

Arnold stood watching her through the window 
until she stepped into the car. Then he turned 
to the cashier. “Nice woman, Mrs. Cutter, but 
—well, she’s not vivacious, is she*?” he said, grin¬ 
ning. 

“I have often wondered how a man like Cutter 
came to choose such a wife,” the cashier returned 
with a slower grin. 

“Wasn’t a man like Cutter is now when he 
courted her. Young fellow; I remember him 
well; had a fine physical sense of himself. No¬ 
body suspected he would ever develop the money¬ 
making talents of a wolf in the market then. Fell 
in love with a pretty girl. She was the prettiest 

190 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


thing in Shannon. Married her. That’s how it 
happened,” Arnold explained. 

“Seems to have turned out all right.” 

“Never heard anything to the contrary; but 
you can’t tell. Something is in the wind. I 
thought Mrs. Cutter looked pretty shaky this 
morning. Had a sort of dying gasp in her eye. 
Pale, noncommittal. Couldn’t get a darn thing 
out of her about Cutter. But she may be trained 
that way. Wives of great men often remind us 
that what’s husband’s business is none of our busi¬ 
ness,” he laughed. “Cutter’s a sort of cheap great 
man. How much did she deposit?” lowering his 
voice. 

“Fifteen thousand.” 

“Open account?” 

The cashier nodded. 

Arnold whistled. 

“Show’s Cutter trusts her, anyhow.” 

“Shows she’s not being guided by her husband’s 
advice, or she’d never keep that much money 
idle,” Arnold retorted. 

As things turned out, however, this was the 
busiest money in Shannon that autumn. It was 
spent with amazing swiftness at a time when the 
war extravagance of our government had already 
set the pace for reckless spending. 

191 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


A situation frequently develops under our very 
eyes, and we have no suspicion of it. The fact is, 
most situations that develop into sensations begin 
this way. Then we discover that what has hap¬ 
pened had been “going on” a long time. Other¬ 
wise, I ask you how should we obtain those 
breathless sensations with which the press and 
society nourish our groggy minds'? It is the un¬ 
expected that stirs and animates our greedy, pop- 
eyed interest in life, especially the other fellow’s 
life. 

I will not go so far as to say that Helen acted 
from design, for she was the least devious or de¬ 
signing woman I ever knew; but she must have 
counted on the probability that some time must 
elapse before the breach between Cutter and her¬ 
self could be suspected in Shannon. His absence 
would not be significant, because his business in¬ 
terests in New York had kept him away from 
home most of the time for a year. The war, the 
violent emotions and the terrific demands it im¬ 
posed had unsettled all life. 

People who never left home arose and flew 
this way and that, like flocks of distracted birds. 
Old maids with dutiful domestic records, sud¬ 
denly laid aside their darning gourds and church 
work and sailed for France, went into canteens 

192 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

and became the honorable mothers of whole regi¬ 
ments. Young girls did likewise, and earned 
for themselves distinctions that will become a 
heritage to womankind, all mordant-tongued 
gossips to the contrary notwithstanding. In 
Shannon the women worked like bees. If you 
paid your Red Cross assessments, turned in sweat¬ 
ers and wash rags for the soldiers in France, no 
further notice was taken of you. Because all 
womanly interests and affections were centered 
on these boys in France. 

Helen made her contributions to these enter¬ 
prises, bought a few bonds and disappeared be¬ 
fore the middle of October. The inference was 
that she had joined her husband in New York. 
The Shannon Sentinel so stated in a brief local on 
no better authority than that the editor had seen 
her board the express one evening. Passengers 
bound for New York always took this train. And 
where else could Mrs. Cutter be going when every 
finger of your imagination pointed to New York 
and her husband as her logical and legitimate 
destination? 

This long-legged logical faculty, directed by 
imagination, is responsible for much that is ficti¬ 
tious in current gossip and even in written records; 
witness, for example, that master work of fiction, 

193 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


Mr. H. G. Wells’ “Outline of History.” It is 
logical, convincing, and much of it is based upon 
the most entrancing interpretation of rocks, fos¬ 
sils and bones—which does not prove anything 
except that the sciences of geology, anthropology 
and the rest of them are bright-eyed sciences, full 
of delightfully imaginary conclusions. While it 
may all be the truth, we do not know that it is 
true, and Mr. Wells cannot prove that it is. 
Meanwhile, if we could exercise as much faith 
and imagination toward God and the future as 
he has shown in revealing the Paleozoic and previ¬ 
ous periods in the past, somebody would be born 
presently fledged with wings and a skyward mind. 

But, all that aside, what I set out to tell was 
that Helen did not go to New York and that 
she did not return to Shannon until the beginning 
of the following year. 

Shortly after her departure, a tall, dark young 
man with high black hair, who carried his head 
bare, apparently out of deference to or pride in 
this hair, descended from the morning train at 
Shannon. He was accompanied by an ordinary 
looking man, apparently of the higher artisan 
class. The two of them entered a taxi and dis¬ 
appeared out Wiggs Street. 

No notice would ever have been taken of them, 

194 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

if they had not been seen at a distance, standing 
in front of the Cutter residence, staring at it, 
gesticulating, evidently engaged in fervid con¬ 
versation, moving from one side of the lawn to 
the other to stare again, talk and swing up high 
gestures at this little, low, white setting hen of a 
house, as if it was of the uttermost importance 
to do something about it. 

Mrs. Flitch watched these two strangers until 
she reached a certain conclusion. Then she went 
to the telephone and called Mrs. Shaw. She 
asked her if she had heard that the Cutter home 
was to be sold. 

Mrs. Shaw replied that she had not; but that 
she knew Mrs. Cutter had stored all her furni¬ 
ture and things in the barn before she left. 

Mrs. Flitch said, well, that settled it. They 
were evidently about to sell the place. Some men 
were out there looking at it now. No, strangers. 
She had seen them pass just after the morning 
train from Atlanta came in. Real-estate men, 
probably. She said she knew all the time that 
the place would be sold. The wonder to her 
was that Helen had stayed out there so long, 
with her husband practically living in New York. 
And so on and so forth until they reached the 
usual discussion of Red Cross supplies. 

195 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


A few days later the ordinary man of the arti¬ 
san type returned to Shannon with a roll of blue 
print under his arm. The next thing Shannon 
knew the roof was off the Cutter house and there 
was a corps of workmen out there, spreading wings 
to it, putting on another story and setting up 
magnificent columns in front to support the 
coronet-countenance of this house. And from the 
awful rumpus going on within, it was evident that 
partitions were being torn out and elegant changes 
being made. 

There was no Creel to censor news in Shannon. 
Rumors started and turned back, or rumors died 
during a Liberty Loan drive. Finally, it was 
settled that the Cutters had not sold their place, 
but that they were spending a fortune rebuilding 
it. They were not obliged to count the costs, 
even during these strenuous times when the price 
of labor and materials were beyond the reach of 
most people. They had plenty of money and no 
children. Still, a display of wealth at such a 
time was certainly in bad taste. Had anybody 
heard a word from Helen since she went to New 
York? This query went the rounds of the Red 
Cross room late in November. No one had heard 
from Helen. Mrs. Arnold said that her husband 
had received one or two letters from Mr. Cutter 

196 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


on matters of business. She understood that Mr. 
Cutter had some kind of government contract and 
was making a great deal of money. 

Mrs. Flitch tossed her little gray head, snapped 
her black eyes and said she supposed the Cutters 
would come back now and then, with their maids 
and butlers and valets and fancy dogs, and quar¬ 
antine themselves in this fine house and refer to 
the people of Shannon as the “natives.” If they 
did, it would make no difference to her. She had 
known the Cutters since George Cutter’s father 
and mother came to Shannon and lived in a three- 
room house, and Maggie Cutter did her own work. 
And she lived next door to the Adamses for 
twenty years. Helen was nobody but the daugh¬ 
ter of Sam Adams who was a carpenter, and she 
never would be anything else to her. 

Mrs. Shaw said if it had been her house she 
would not have painted it colonial yellow\ But 
she admitted the tall white columns “set it 
off.” 

Mrs. Arnold said she and Mr. Arnold had 
strolled out there on the last bank holiday. They 
had gone through the house, because they ex¬ 
pected to build and wanted “ideas.” The rooms 
were large now, lofty ceilinged; and the walls 
were beautiful. She had been especially im- 

197 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


pressed with the big room added on the west 
side. “It is different from the others which are 
done in a misty gray with the woodwork finished 
in old ivory. They are elegant and sober. But 
this one is not sober, very bright.” 

“Probably the ball room,” Mrs. Flitch sug¬ 
gested. 

Mrs. Arnold glanced up from the bandage, she 
was rolling. “No,” she said, “I am sure it is not 
a ball room, because it opens into the one Mrs. 
Cutter has reserved for herself, they told me. 
The decorations—are unusual. I was surprised.” 

This was as far as she got. She had a neat little 
mind and only gossiped like a perfect lady, which 
is a very fine art. Still, she thought it interest¬ 
ing, if not sensational in a pleasant way, that 
this room had a decoration of Mother Goose pic¬ 
tures around the top of it—all the literature of 
infancy illustrated there, in fact, from this wan¬ 
dering goose mounting a highly ornamental stair¬ 
case to the lurid cow with exalted tail in the act 
of jumping over the moon. And she was glad 
Mrs. Cutter had “this” to look forward to after 
so many years. A woman without children was to 
be pitied. 

Then Helen Cutter came home late in Janu¬ 
ary, quite unobtrusively and alone. No maid, no 

198 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

wig-tailed man servant, no fancy dog. Evidently 
Mr. Cutter was still in New York. 

But rich people continually did queer things 
that other people could not afford to do. From 
that point of view everything looked all right. 
Their wives went about the world alone, and 
their husbands frequently did business in some 
other part of the world. No one in Shannon sus¬ 
pected that the relations between Helen and her 
husband were even strained. They merely heard 
that she had “come down” to superintend the fur¬ 
nishing of her new house, that she had engaged 
an interior decorator for this purpose, that a 
great many fine things had been shipped in, and 
that she was having some of the best pieces of 
her golden oak done over for her own room. 
These pieces were painted gray and delicately 
ornamented with tiny wreaths of flowers. As it 
turned out, however, most of this old stuff was 
used to furnish that large, bright and sprightly 
room with the Mother Goose wall paper. 

As usual, Helen saw little of her neighbors. 
The weather was bad; her house was topsy-turvy; 
she was very busy; and she had an established 
reputation for reserve. Still, they met her here 
and there on the street, in the shops, in passing. 
And once shortly after her return she had paid 

199 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


a brief visit to the Red Cross rooms to deliver 
her quota of sweaters. She would have remained 
longer: she craved the comradeship of these 
women whom she had known all her life, but 
the consciousness of her humiliation, yet unknown 
to them, affected her courage. 

Sometimes the woman who has fallen secretly 
avoids her friends and acquaintances, because she 
knows that to keep up relations is a form of cheat¬ 
ing, for which she will be the more severely pun¬ 
ished when her deflection is known. I suppose 
Helen, who had every virtue, felt the impending 
mortification of her situation, when it became 
known in Shannon that her husband had deserted 
her. 

She came in, wearing a plain, long coat with 
a fine fur collar and a close-fitting fur hat. She 
was received cordially and a place was made for 
her at the long table where the bandages were 
being rolled. She sat on the edge of her chair, 
as if she must be going presently. She was not 
smiling. She appeared years younger, and there 
was a lost look in her blue eyes which no one 
noticed. 

She took off her coat, in response to Mrs. 
Shaw’s invitation; but she had only a moment to 
stay, slipping off this garment and revealing her 

200 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

figure slender as a pencil in a blue frock of some 
smooth stuff smartly buttoned to her chin. 

“We are glad to see you back here, Helen,” 
Mrs. Shaw said. 

Helen said “Thank you” for the simple reason 
that she could not pretend to be glad of any¬ 
thing. A mania for veracity makes you inelastic, 
uncouth and ungraceful socially. 

Mrs. Flitch asked her when she was expecting 
“George.” It was a shot in the dark, and she 
did not mean it. But she was a woman whose 
very instinct could aim accurately at your vul¬ 
nerable point. 

“I am not expecting Mr. Cutter at all,” Helen 
replied. 

Mrs. Flitch had to take this answer, which 
was too frank to excite suspicion. But she did 
want to know if Helen expected to make her 
home in New York. “I suppose you will only 
come here now and then,” she suggested, looking 
over the top of her glasses at her victim. 

“I shall never live in New York. My home is 
here,” Helen answered, with the air of a person 
who would do this, but would not discuss her 
plans. 

She was one of those human “short circuits” 
who drops the periods in conversations and corn- 

201 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


pels you to start another sentence on another 
topic. These women went back to the perpetual 
discussions that raged at that time in every Red 
Cross working room, about the specifications for 
wounded soldiers’ dressing gowns. Mrs. So-and- 
So’s work had been returned, because she had put 
too many pockets—or not enough pockets—on the 
gowns she had made. 

Mrs. Flitch had suffered the outrage of having 
two sweaters returned because she had finished 
them around the bottom with a fancy rib stitch. 
“As if that made any difference. There is too 
much red tape in these Red Cross regulations,” 
she exclaimed. “They obstruct us more in the 
work than the wire entanglements in France ob¬ 
struct the advance of the German Army.” 

This was not true, but it was so aptly put that 
a murmur of sympathetic comment followed while 
needles flew and threads snapped. 

Mrs. Flitch was so fluffed up by this involun¬ 
tary vote of confidence in her rib stitch and her 
point of view that she turned to Helen and asked 
her if she did not “think so too.” 

Helen answered no, she did not think so, be¬ 
cause then everybody would follow their own 
fancies in the making of these supplies, and there 
would be no system. 


202 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

Mrs. Flitch’s needle flickered like a tiny spear 
as she hoisted it with a jerk, bent over and bit 
off her thread as if this thread was the head of 
an enemy. 

Another “short circuit” ! Another fuse of con¬ 
versation burned out! Tongues flew like bab¬ 
bling wings to cover the breach. Mrs. Flitch sat 
drawn up and reared back, cheeks reddening as if 
a wasp had stung her in the face. 

Helen was like a tactless person who contributes 
an adverse opinion upon stepmothers in a com¬ 
pany where several eminently respectable ladies 
have married widowers with children. She felt 
the sparks about her, but she was not dismayed. 
She did not care how Mrs. Flitch felt. She had 
reached that invulnerable stage of indifference 
arrived at only through great suffering or moral 
abandonment. In either case, it is always a state 
of mental courage. 

Mrs. Arnold was chairman of the Red Cross 
Chapter in Shannon. She sat at the head of the 
work table during these snapped-off conversations, 
discreetly silent. She was pursuing her own train 
of thought. Helen stood up presently to put on 
her coat. She regarded this supple, wisp-waisted 
woman with secret amazement. For she was the 
only one there who had seen the nursery decora- 

203 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


tions in that new west wing room of the Cutter 
residence. Her mind worked like the nose of a 
rabbit at Helen, as the latter took her departure. 

The consensus of opinion after she went out 
was that she had “changed,” with Mrs. Flitch in 
the minority. She said she could not see any 
difference. “She’s only changed her ugly gray 
coat and blue hat for a good-looking coat and fur 
hat.” This was all that was said about her. 
Gossip, if you remember, was much neglected 
during this period. We indulged in it briefly and 
went back to the transfiguring sensations of our 
martial emotions. 


204 


CHAPTER XVII 


And Helen went home, let herself into her fine 
house, took off her things and sat down before 
the library fire. 

She really had imported a maid, an ex-modiste 
of mature years, who would be of service to her 
in the choosing of her clothes and dressing herself 
properly. She could hear this woman now moving 
about in the next room getting out her things. 
She was practicing dressing for the evening, be¬ 
cause now she had a purpose and a future in view 
which some years hence might involve toilettes 
and magnificence. 

It certainly does change a woman to lose her 
husband. It buries her or brings her out. I 
suppose if Helen’s husband had been properly 
and providentially parted from her by death, she 
might have retired sorrowfully into her widow’s 
state and effaced herself or devoted herself quite 
differently to good works. But the passing of 
George Cutter left no such sanctities to dignify 
her. On the contrary she had been abandoned 
on account of her virtues and stupid devotion to 

205 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

home. She was like Job. She held on to her in¬ 
tegrity and was; sustained, as he was, by her 
conceit. 

But unlike Job, who suffered considerable 
financial losses during this period, she had come 
into a considerable estate. She had been paid off 
by this deflecting husband. Money will sustain 
your pride and courage as an outraged woman 
when mere faith in God may leave you exalted 
in the ditch of every worldly misfortune. Helen 
had remained the proper resurrection period flat 
on her back in bed, not from histrionic design; 
but she was actually able to rise on the third day. 
My belief is that everything in the Scriptures is 
true, if you adjust yourself to the way it is true. 
Thus, if you will not waste your vital forces in 
emotional dissipations of grief when overtaken 
by sorrow or humiliation, if you are really will¬ 
ing to live again normally, three days down will 
usually put you on your feet with sufficient cour¬ 
age and strength for the performance. It is no 
use to send for the doctor. In cases of this kind 
a physician is a sort of psychic drug you take, 
which requires a repetition of his soothing pres¬ 
ence. Thrice fortunate are they who dare to 
discover that the wings of adversity are the strong¬ 
est wings upward in human affairs. 

206 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

Helen, penguin bred, had acquired this serene 
flying power. She had been absolved from a 
depressing devotion to an ignoble man. She came 
out of her travail informed with pride, the cold 
fury which good women, scorned, feel, and with 
a determination to have what she had always 
wanted and could not have as a wife. 

She leaned back in her chair before the library 
fire, clasped her hands over her head and looked 
anticipatingly at the ceiling, a queer expression 
on this formerly merely dutiful woman’s face, like 
a song in her eyes, like faith that smooths the 
brow, like a hope that lifted and sweetened the 
corners of her mouth; there were no shadows of 
fear to dim this gentle effulgence of eyes, lips 
and brow. 

To be loved does make a woman happy, but it 
never endows her with her own peace, only pro¬ 
tection. There is a difference, if you know how 
to read it, between love and hope in her face. 
The former is conferred and may be taken away: 
the latter is an act of faith and cannot be dimmed 
or destroyed. Helen had this look of “anticipa¬ 
tion,” as some physicians call it, a mark which 
Nature confers upon women like a meek distinc¬ 
tion. 

Helen finally went to her room to practice her 

207 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


evening toilette. At five o’clock she was dressed 
and standing before the mirror studying this 
cream-colored frock of crepe, that clung to her 
figure like long folded wings. It was not 
“trimmed.” She insisted upon a certain prim¬ 
ness, as good women do who have no sense of 
style. 

Some women live and die so virginal that they 
never know why other women wear a rose, or 
display the sparkle of a jewel upon their breast. 
If they put on these invitations to love it is merely 
copying the universal feminine custom. They do 
not know how to mean the rose or catch the 
sparkle of the jewel in their manner. 

Helen wore no invitations. She was simply 
anxious to look the mistress of this establishment, 
never to be mistaken for a dutiful servant. The 
horror she had felt of this impending fate since 
shortly after her marriage, when she knew that 
she was not to have children, and the long sen¬ 
tence she had actually served in this capacity 
rankled. 

A bell rang somewhere in the house. She paid 
no attention, since she had no visitors and the 
front door bell never rang except when something 
was delivered. 

A moment later there was a tap on her door 

208 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

and the maid entered. “Some one to see you, 
Mrs. Cutter,” she announced. 

4 Who is she*?” 

“A man.” 

“Not Read?” referring to one of the work¬ 
men. 

“No, Mrs. Cutter; this is a gentleman. I left 
him in the parlor.” 

Helen frowned. 

“He is somebody. I am sure of that. And 
he said that you knew him,” the woman explained. 

“That I knew him? Then he—why, it must 
be Mr. Arnold,” Helen said. Arnold was the 
only man in Shannon who might have any reason 
for calling on her. 

The woman hesitated, gave her mistress a flut¬ 
tering glance as if some sort of gibbering, peep¬ 
ing thought had suddenly popped up in her mind. 
“This is not Mr. Arnold,” she said. “I think he 
is a stranger. Shall I tell him you are not at 
home?” 

“I will see him; but hereafter, Charlotte, I 
am not at home to any one who does not give 
his name.” 

“Yes, Mrs. Cutter,” Charlotte answered 
meekly, closing the door behind her. Then she 
glanced again at the crumpled bill she held in 

209 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

her hand, thrust it into her pocket, wrinkled her 
nose, sniffed and discreetly disappeared. 

Helen stood for a moment with her back to the 
mirror, as we all do sometimes when we cannot 
bear to read in our own faces the fear we have 
in our hearts. Since that night six months ago, 
when Cutter had left her, she had received no 
word from him. She had sternly repressed every 
thought of him. But never for a day had she 
been free from the vague fear that he might 
return. She no longer loved him; she despised 
him. Yet the old habit of submission—if he 
should return, how could she find the courage to 
send him away, if he asserted his claim upon her 
as his wife? She must do it. Her plans were 
made for a different life altogether. But sup¬ 
pose now, when she was on the point of realizing 
her dearest hope, this man waiting for her in 
the parlor should be her husband? 

She came slowly into the hall and advanced 
toward the open door of the parlor. Reproaches, 
words inconceivable to her until this moment, 
trembled upon her lips. This was her house; she 
had built it for her own peace and happiness. 
She would not share it, not for the space of a 
breath, with a man so depraved that he could 
betray his own wife, abandon her—and so on and 

210 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

so forth as she advanced, halted, and finally came 
steadily up the long hall, pale with fury, eyes 
blazing blue flames, convinced by her own fears 
that this man was Cutter. She was ready to 
deal with him according to the natural vocabulary 
of an outraged woman. 

For the gentlest woman, wronged, may sud¬ 
denly change into a virago after you have made 
sure that she will endure anything. But if she 
ever breaks, it is like any other form of hysteria, 
incurable. She will be subject to verbal frenzies 
upon the slightest provocation so long as she 
lives. 

For one instant Helen stood upon the threshold 
of her parlor, speechless with amazement. Shaded 
lights cast a soft glow from above over the room, 
where the faintest outline of castles showed be¬ 
tween shadowy trees in the wall paper. And 
tufted, spindle-legged chairs, covered with blue- 
and-golden brocades, flashed like spots of sun¬ 
light in the pale gray gloom. 

The visitor was undoubtedly enjoying these ef¬ 
fects. He sat, the elegant figure of a man, on 
the sofa beyond the circle of light cast from the 
reading lamp behind him. His knees were 
crossed. He was working one foot musingly after 
the manner of a man pleased with his reflections. 

211 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


And he was smiling—not a smile you could pos¬ 
sibly understand, unless you are familiar with the 
outlaw mind of certain rich men. But, in case you 
are scandalously psychic, you might have inferred 
that he was smiling at these dim castles in Helen's 
wall paper as a prospective tourist in the ro¬ 
mantic lands, where passing rivers sing to these 
castles and where scenes, centuries old, are laid 
for lovers. 

He was so much absorbed in whatever he was 
trailing with his thoughts that he had not seen 
Helen when she appeared in the doorway, but 
almost at once some sense warned him of her 
presence. 

His startled glance caught her. He was on 
his feet at once. “Oh, Mrs. Cutter! This is in¬ 
deed good of you. I was afraid you would not 
see me," he exclaimed, hurrying to meet her. 

“Mr. Shippen!" she gasped, with no marks of 
pleasure in the look she gave him. It was strictly 
interrogative, unfeelingly so. 

“Yes," he returned hastily, interpreting her 
manner. “I came down to look after the sale of 
that mining property. Couldn't resist dropping 
in on my way back to town this afternoon. 
Wanted to see you." 

She moved past him, sat down some distance 

212 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

beyond and fixed her wide blue gaze upon him. 

He followed, not quite sure about sitting, feel¬ 
ing somehow that she might be going to keep him 
on his feet. Still he risked it and chose a chair 
politely removed from her immediate neighbor¬ 
hood, which was chilly, he could not tell whether 
or not from design. 

“You wish to see me?” she asked after a pause. 

The question disconcerted him. He flushed, re¬ 
covered himself and showed his teeth in a hand¬ 
some smile. “Yes, do you mind?” he retorted. 

“But what do you want to see me about?” she 
insisted, as if this must be a matter of business, a 
painful business, since she knew that he was asso¬ 
ciated with her husband. 

He snickered nervously, recovered his gravity 
at once, warned by the tightening of her lips. 
“When are you coming to New York?” he asked 
suddenly. 

She drew back from this adder of a question. 
“Is this why you came—you were sent?” she 
barely breathed the words, laying a hand like a 
confession upon her breast. 

“I was not sent,” he returned quickly. “You 
understand?” 

She signified that she did with a nod of her 
head. She released him for one moment from 

213 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


her steady gaze; then she fixed her eyes on him 
again with the same interrogative suspense, as 
much as to say, “Well, then, if you were not 
sent, why are you here 4 ?” She could not sense a 
meaning that would have been plain to another 
woman. 

It was the stupidity of goodness, he decided, 
and was charmed by a certain experimental fear 
of her. He must proceed cautiously. That was 
the delightful part of it, to be obliged to watch 
his step in an affair of this kind. He had no 
doubt of his ultimate success—a married woman, 
abandoned by her husband. He knew all about 
that by inference from Cutter. Cutter was too 
brazen in the conducting of his “bachelor” apart¬ 
ments not to feel perfectly safe. 

He supposed there had been some sort of 
financial adjustment between him and his wife. 
He knew very well that the situation in New 
York would not last. Cutter was simply the 
profitable investment a certain beautiful and bril¬ 
liant woman had chosen, who had the record of a 
sentimental rocket among the sporting financiers 
of the East. The first time he cr»me a cropper in 
the markets, she would abandon him with the 
swiftness and insolence that would make the fel- 

214 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


low’s head swim. Then Cutter would return to 
his wife. They always did. 

Sometimes he had regretted not having a wife 
laid by himself as a sort of permanent stake, 
domestically speaking. If only he did not feel 
such revulsion toward the candor and monotonous 
details of actual married life. His decadent del¬ 
icacy would be offended by the squalor of licensed 
intimacy with a woman. “Squalor” was the word 
he invariably used in discussing the psychology of 
marriage. 

Still, he might marry Helen Cutter. She would 
never be in his way. She was not in her husband’s 
way now. And she was singularly refreshing to 
his jaded fancy. He had been so corrupt that, by 
revulsion rather than repentance, invincible virtue 
in a woman attracted him. Besides, it would be a 
good joke on Cutter to lose his wife—such a wife 
—while he was philandering in New York. He 
had always entertained a secret contempt for the 
fellow—a bounder who did not know how to 
bound; a gambler with the nerve of a financial 
adventurer. New York teemed with men of his 
type. 

They had exchanged some commonplace re¬ 
marks while he hit this line of reflection in the 

215 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


high places, having gone over it many times be¬ 
fore. That is to say, he offered the remarks— 
on the weather, on the growth of Shannon, and 
more particularly upon the current aspects of the 
war. Helen’s contributions to these topics had 
been brief. He comprehended perfectly that she 
was still in suspense as to the meaning of his visit. 

He rose presently, took his chair, advanced with 
a friendly air and sat down near her, potentially 
within reach. And was amused to see that she 
still regarded him as from a great distance. “But 
you have not answered my question,” he said, go¬ 
ing back to that. “When are you coming to New 
York to live? Thought you would have been 
settled there long before this time.” 

“I shall live here.” 

“Never in New York?” 

“No.” 

i 

“But you are not planning to neglect us en¬ 
tirely! Cutter would not stand for that. You 
will be coming up occasionally, of course,” he in¬ 
sisted, smiling. 

“No; this is my home.” 

Gad, couldn’t she even squirm a bit? Why 
didn’t she blaze forth at Cutter or cover the sit¬ 
uation with a few lies? He wondered how it 
would feel to live with a woman who hit the 

216 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


truth on the head every time, as if the truth was 
a nail to be driven in, even if it pierced your 
vitals. 

Shippen swept a complimentary glance around 
the room as if in reply to her last remark. “Well, 
you have certainly made it a beautiful home,” he 
said, feeling by the growing emergency of the 
question in her eyes that if he did not get off on 
another tack, she might force an explanation of 
his presence here which he was not ready to make 
until he had won more of her confidence. “This 
room is marvelous,” he went on, “sedate and fem¬ 
inine. It escapes the austerity of being a noble 
room by a miracle. What is it? Piety with a 
flash of color, I should say. However did you 
think of such an effect? And how did you ac¬ 
complish it?” 

“I did not do it. I have learned something,” 
she said, off her guard for the first time, following 
his eyes about this room as if she accompanied 
his thoughts. 

“What have you learned?” he asked, smiling. 

“To buy what I want—not mere things, but 
taste in the choice of these things. It is for sale, 
like any other commodity.” 

He laughed, with an appreciative glint of the 
eye. 


217 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“For so long I did not know that taste is 
the one thing most people have not got. They 
only look as if they had it, when in fact they 
have purchased it. You buy it from your tailor. 
The woman whose clothes please you pays the 
modiste who makes them much more for her taste 
than for her work. You can buy any kind of 
taste, good, bad or indifferent; but nearly every¬ 
body buys it.” 

What she said was not interesting; but he was 
interested that she could think it; it showed that 
she had a mind, which he had doubted. He 
hoped she would not develop too much along this 
line. The perfect woman, in his opinion, should 
have loveliness, health, and only a rudimentary 
intelligence. He was very tired, indeed, of the 
rhinestone sparkle of feminine wit. 

“It is the same with the building and furnish¬ 
ing of a house,” Helen showed up again. “They 
hire an architect and a decorator. And then they 
hire a landscape gardener. And when the whole 
scene inside and out is laid, they live in it as if 
they had planned it and achieved it. But they 
have bought every line, every shadow, and all the 
perspective—things that you feel and see, but can¬ 
not touch. It is not the house, but the idea it sug¬ 
gests for which you pay most. I had my own 

218 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

ideas, but I employed professionals to produce 
them. This is what I have learned,” she con¬ 
cluded, “not to cobble my own ideas. I simply 
told those men what I wanted.” 

“I should have liked to hear your instructions,” 
he said. 

“They were short. I told the architect that I 
wanted an honorable looking house, not a grand 
one.” 

He nodded, appreciatively, and waited. Some 
subtle change had taken place in her mind toward 
him during this last moment. There was a com¬ 
pelling power in her expression, as if now she 
wished to hold his attention. She had a purpose. 
He became uneasy and curious. 

“And I told the man who was to choose the 
furniture and do the inside decorations that I 
wanted a home, a mild kind of place with some 
sadness in it, like the heart of a mother; and rifts 
of brightness in it, like the face of a mother when 
she smiles; and everything very fine to honor her, 
the mother, you understand, in the eyes of her 
children.” 

Shippen’s agreeable attention changed for one 
instant to a blank stare; then he dropped his eyes 
as she went on with this intimate account of what 
she wanted her home to be. Mother! And she 

219 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


had no children. The term had for him a sort of 
embarrassing animal significance. It was not dis¬ 
cussed this way in polite circles, even by women 
who were mothers. You were supposed not to 
know it or to forget that this sparkling being 
with whom you were conversing, or maybe flirt¬ 
ing, had passed through the experiences of an 
accouchement. His feelings suffered a revulsion 
toward her. But she held him as if she meant 
that he should carry away with him the dimen¬ 
sions, the waist measure, the countenance and the 
germinating biography of this house. 

“I told him,” she went on, still referring to the 
decorator, “that I wanted a home inside, where 
children would look as if they belonged in it, and 
not as if they had escaped from their own hidden 
quarters—soft places in it, you know, where a 
baby could just fall asleep, like the sofa over 
there,” indicating with a nod a wide, low, old- 
fashioned soda shrouded in shadows. 

He cast an embarrassed glance at it. His feel¬ 
ings were that a babe should be kept concealed 
until it was a child of an age to be decently ex¬ 
posed and confessed. Some men are like that, and 
a few women. Their parent instincts have de¬ 
cayed. 

“And when they become grown sons and daugh- 

. 220 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ters,” she continued, taking no notice of his dis¬ 
comfiture, “there should be wide, happy spaces in 
here for their joys—a house for lovers and wed¬ 
dings.” 

He waited. Apparently she had finished. He 
raised his eyes and saw her flushed, animated. 
“But why should you want such a house?” he 
asked, not that it made any difference now what 
she wanted. So far as he was concerned the spell 
of her charm was broken. His one desire was to 
escape this disenchantment and to find out what 
was in the wind for Cutter. He clung to that 
joke. 

“Because all the time I was a wife I wanted 
this house, and I longed for children. Now I can 
have them.” 

Shippen stood up. She remained seated, eyes 
lifted with that rapt look fixed upon him. 

“Did you say—children, Mrs. Cutter?” he 
stammered. 

“Yes; now I shall have children,” she repeated. 

“Well, all right; but under the circumstances, 
it is a little unusual; don’t you think so?” he 
said, the compass of his mind already pointed 
toward the door. 

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, and was evidently 
about to launch into this feature of the case when 

221 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


she saw that he was about to take his departure. 
This reminded her of something. “But what was 
it you wished to see me about, Mr. Shippen?” 
she asked, with a return of that vague anxiety 
in the tones of her voice. 

“Why, merely to resume a pleasant acquaint¬ 
ance, I suppose,” he answered politely. 

“Oh.” 

“Thank you for receiving me,” he said. “Can 
I do anything for you in New York?” 

“No,” she answered quickly, but with no shade 
of embarrassment to indicate that she knew he re¬ 
ferred to her husband. 

He took his departure politely and formally, 
but he had all the sensations of flight. “Good 
heavens!” he exclaimed the moment he was out of 
the house. “To think I was on the point of let¬ 
ting myself in for her! What is a woman, any¬ 
how? Some confounded provision Nature makes 
against her own defeat—a snare laid for us, noth¬ 
ing else. They have their own mind and pur¬ 
poses, contrary to our mind and purposes, whether 
they are good or bad. Something infernally 
tricky about the bad ones: something infernally 
permanent about the good ones. They all want to 
set, like hens,” he snorted. “No wonder Cutter 
kicked out. Don’t blame him. She’s crazy, crazy 

222 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

as a loon, if she is not worse, and of course she 
isn’t that. Well, the joke is on me, not Cutter. 
And mum’s the word when I get back to New 
York. Children! Gad, she must be planning an 
orphanage. Wonder if he knows what she’s do¬ 
ing with his money. Wonder if this town is on to 
the racket.” 

He halted under the first street light and looked 
at his watch; barely time to meet Arnold at the 
hotel. They were to dine together and discuss the 
sale of the mining property which was to be 
handled through the Shannon National Bank. 
He quickened his step. He must get off on the 
eight o’clock express for New York. He had 
received a shock, a revulsion of his romantic emo¬ 
tions. Something distasteful had happened to 
him. He wanted to get away and recover from 
this nausea. 

We all excite a certain amount of interest 
among our fellow men, not because we are in¬ 
teresting, perhaps, but because we live, and to 
that extent are in a degree mysterious. But when 
suddenly a man or woman becomes aware of a 
silent and persistent attention, it is disconcerting, 
because in secret, at least, he knows he has done 
enough to queer himself, if it should be known or 
even suspected. He has, however, the usual hu- 

223 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


man confidence in the deferred publication of 
these deeds until the day of all revelations, when 
the Final Courts sit to judge all men. At this end 
of time it will not matter, because of the leveling 
effects of knowing all men even as they know him. 

In my opinion this will be a day of gasping as¬ 
tonishments among the dusty saints and sinners 
hurriedly summoned so long after they shall have 
forgotten even their virtues, much less their sins, 
which in the flesh we manage to bury beyond pain¬ 
ful recollection as soon as possible. But now and 
then w T e get a whiff of what will happen, when a 
great and good man in the community defaults 
and absconds with the church funds. Meanwhile 
the news that still travels fastest is the news of 
some one’s business which is nobody else’s busi¬ 
ness. 


224 


CHAPTER XVIII 


The next day after Shippen’s visit Helen went 
into Shannon to make some purchases and to make 
sure of the amount of her balance at the bank. 

When she stepped from the car in front of 
Brim’s general merchandise store, it was as if she 
had stepped into a foreign land. The street, all 
things about her, were so familiar that she only 
remembered afterwards the strangeness of fa¬ 
miliar faces. Two men whom she knew passed 
her with their eyes down. A woman regarded 
her with furtive curiosity and returned her salu¬ 
tation with the briefest bow, as if she did not 
really know her. All this happened so quickly 
that she was not yet aware that something very 
personal to her was happening. 

She was still off her guard when Mrs. Flitch 
sailed by her between the lace and stocking coun¬ 
ter, merely giving her an eye-for-an-eye look, but 
with no further recognition, although Helen had 
wished her a “Good afternoon, Mrs. Flitch.” She 
disposed of this hint by wondering what she had 
done to Mrs. Flitch, because this lady was noto- 

225 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


riously sensitive. She had a turgid temper and 
reserved the right to show her poverty and inde¬ 
pendence on the slightest provocation by ceasing 
to speak to you. 

Half an hour later when she came out to her 
car, a cold rain was beginning. She saw Mrs. 
Shaw approaching with no umbrella to protect her 
new spring hat. She waited, meaning to pick her 
up and take her wherever she should be going. 
But when she hailed her, this lady affected not to 
understand. She bowed coldly with the rain in 
her face and said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Cutter,” 
although she had always called her “Helen,” and 
passed on. 

It is depressing to find yourself suddenly out¬ 
lawed by the people whom you have always 
known. Helen was never popular in Shannon. 
Unhappy people rarely ever are. They have so 
little to contribute to the common fund of human 
animation. But she had a certain standing in 
the good will of her neighbors. 

It was not until she reached the bank that the 
explanation of what was going on really dawned 
upon her. She had known that it must come, this 
news of her abandonment by her husband, but she 
had not expected it to fall upon her like a curse. 

Arnold, who occupied the chair at the presi- 

226 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


dent’s desk inside the doorway of the bank, hav¬ 
ing resumed this custom of the elder Cutter, had 
always risen to meet her when she came in. He 
would conduct her to the chair near his desk and 
attend personally to her affairs, if it was no more 
than the cashing of a check. This morning he was 
at his desk as usual. So was the extra chair, and 
nobody in it, but beyond a glance and a bow he 
took no notice of her. She went on to the cashier’s 
window and presented a check. She was startled 
to see him glance at it, then step swiftly back to 
the bookkeeper and make eye sure of her balance 
before he cashed it. 

She took the bills, thrust under the wicket and 
stared about her confused. She had lost prestige 
here. Why? She wondered. She had spent the 
money left from her mother’s estate on the house, 
and a few thousands besides. But she was amply 
supplied with funds. She had never overdrawn 
her account. 

Silly reflections! Childish defense against this 
financial coldness! If Arnold had known that 
she still had securities to the amount of consider¬ 
ably more than one hundred thousand dollars in 
her safety deposit box, his manner would have 
continued balmy. But he did not know this. He 
only knew that she was spending a great deal of 

227 




THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

money. And he had dined with Shippen the 
previous evening. 

Shippen had told him that she was separated 
from her husband. When he expressed surprise, 
Shippen expressed regret that he had “let the 
thing out”; he supposed the facts were already 
known in Shannon, he said. 

Arnold assured him to the contrary. He said 
that he had had a “hunch,” because he was sub¬ 
ject to hunches as a financial man; but he had 
rather expected Cutter himself to fail. He had 
never entertained the slightest suspicion of Mrs. 
Cutter. How long had she been separated from 
her husband? 

Shippen replied that he did not know; but he 
had thought probably some time before Cutter 
resigned from the presidency of the Shannon bank 
and took up his residence in New York. 

Arnold said he thought it must have occurred 
quite recently, because Mrs. Cutter had been with 
her husband in New York for at least five months. 
In fact, she had only returned to Shannon late in 
January. 

“I am associated with Cutter. I see him every 
day. I am constantly in his home, a bachelor 
apartment, and I positively know that his wife 
has never been in the place,” Shippen replied. 

228 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“But I tell you she left here soon after Cutter 
did, and she did not return until about two 
months ago,” Arnold insisted, round-eyed with 
amazement. 

Shippen closed his lips grimly, implying that 
these were the lips of a gentlemen. A woman 
scorned may be dangerous, but a man defeated 
can be meanly revengeful. Shippen was react¬ 
ing, after the manner of his kind, from the disgust 
he now felt toward this innocent woman. 

No, he answered in reply to Arnold’s next ques¬ 
tion, there had been no divorce yet, though he had 
reason to believe Cutter would be glad to get one. 

“Cutter!” Arnold exclaimed. 

Shippen nodded; then after a pause he added: 
“My impression is that Mrs. Cutter will not be 
the one to bring the suit, if it is ever brought.” 

“But he—man, do you know what you are say¬ 
ing about that woman?” Arnold exclaimed. 

“I am saying nothing about her. I have seen 
something of her. I paid her a visit this after¬ 
noon, in fact; but—” 

“You know her?” 

“Since 1914,” he nodded. 

A silence followed this news. Men know one 
another. Arnold knew Shippen. He sat now 
staring at the tablecloth. It was his duty, but he 

229 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


would be sorry to tell his wife. She liked Mrs. 
Cutter. Also, it was his duty to see that the 
bank was secure in its dealings with her. Until 
this moment he would have advanced her any 
reasonable sum. He would warn Lambkin in the 
morning to keep an eye on her balance. A woman 
like that had very few financial scruples, and no 
sense of the future. They usually lived by the 
day. Still, this fellow Shippen might be mis¬ 
taken. Arnold had been a resident of Shannon 
only a few years, but he had inferred that Mrs. 
Cutter was devoted to her home and husband, an 
ordinary woman, good looking but not attractive. 
He would have sworn she was not attractive. 
She had never attracted him and in a discreet way 
he had a man’s eye. 

He accompanied Shippen to his train; then he 
went home and told Mrs. Arnold. 

She was indignant. She said she did not be¬ 
lieve a word of it. Later, Mrs. Shaw came in to 
borrow some yarn for a sweater she wished to 
finish that evening. She got the yarn, and this 
story about Mrs. Cutter. 

She agreed with Mrs. Arnold that in her opin¬ 
ion there was not a word of truth in it. Still they 
speculated about how and where Helen had spent 

230 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


those five months when she was not in Shannon 
nor with her husband in New York. 

We may live above reproach, but few of us live 
above suspicion of one sort or another. It is the 
active character-sketching faculty we all have for 
drawing real or imaginary likenesses of each 
other’s secret faces. Women are especially felici¬ 
tous in this art, once they get the suggestion. 
They rarely originate the idea. The most damag¬ 
ing gossip we ever hear descends to us almost 
invariably from men. They whisper it to us; 
we tell it and get more credit for authorship than 
we deserve. 

Thus Mr. Arnold had repeated to his wife what 
Shippen had told and intimated about the Cut¬ 
ters. It is not in the nature of any woman to 
retain such stuff. She must expel it. Therefore 
Mrs. Arnold told Mrs. Shaw. 

And so the news flew, until the town was posted 
with it by the time Helen descended into it the 
next afternoon. 

It is one thing to suffer a great humiliation in 
secret, and quite another thing to read it in the 
eyes of every familiar face. Helen understood 
that her secret was out at last. Nothing else 
could account for the manner of the various 

231 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


people whom she met. She had known, of course, 
that it could not be kept; but she had hoped she 
might have had a little more time to protect 
herself with the one defense she had planned. 

Her lips were trembling when she came out of 
the bank and entered the car. “Drive out the 
River road,” she said. 

Buck glanced back, startled by some emotional 
quality in her voice, which was usually a smooth 
and literal-speaking voice. He was much -more 
surprised by the order she had given, for the rain 
was coming in rattling gusts on the March winds 
and the River road would be “slick as glass.” 
Still, he took it, the big limousine reeling and 
sliding. 

Helen sat as if she had been flung into the 
corner of the seat. She stared through the stream¬ 
ing window at the turgid river. She remembered 
every tree and slope of its banks, although years 
had passed since she had been on this road. 
Sometimes, when all is ready, when we have sur¬ 
vived and are about to live, the power of hope 
fails and the vision fades. Helen passed into 
this coma of defeat. How was she to face these 
looks, this knowledge, this judgment in the eyes 
of the people of Shannon for years and years? 
Could anything ease this pain? What could she 

232 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

love enough to make her indifferent to this per¬ 
petual publicity'? After all, would it not be 
wiser to give up everything and go away? 

The old foundry loomed desolately in the dis¬ 
tance, drenched in rain, the bare boughs of the 
trees whipping against it. The great doorway 
seemed to yawn darkness. Nothing green now, 
no brightness! How long ago since in the shadow 
of this door she had said her prayers to love and 
listened to George’s vows. She remembered 
everything—the yellow primroses at their feet, 
the blue wings of a bird suddenly spread in 
flight over their heads, the fresh, sweet smell of 
thyme and George’s face bent above her in pas¬ 
sionate tenderness. 

The world had passed away since then! How 
could she bear this? It was loneliness. She had 
been dying of loneliness for months. She had 
never been out of pain, not for a moment; she 
knew this now. She wanted her husband—noth¬ 
ing else! Tears filled her eyes; she caught back 
a sob. For an instant her mind held one image, 
that of the man whom she had loved and mar¬ 
ried; one thought, the whole thought of him, a 
reeling picture of the years filled with only her 
devotion to him. 

Then the wind and tide in her breast died away. 

233 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


The color faded from her cheeks. All that had 
failed. She shivered, sat up, astounded that she 
could suffer like this for a man who had aban¬ 
doned her. 

We are not the only ones who fail, my masters. 
Sometimes the very will of God fails too. A 
world slips, waggles in its orbit, and goes rocket¬ 
ing, catching the light of a thousand suns as it 
falls and falls forever through space. 

When they were directly below the foundry, 
Buck halted. 

“Why do you stop here? Go on,” she com¬ 
manded sharply. 

“Miss Helen, we can't,” he protested. “They 
ain't no bottom to this road out yonder. Folks 
don't go no farther'n where we is now.” 

There was a moment’s suspense while the motor 
purred and he waited, by no means enthusiastic 
about driving in this storm. 

“Very well; we will turn back,” she said in a 
queer voice. She was thinking about this road 
with no bottom in it beyond the place where so 
many lovers came to plight their troth. 

Half an hour later, the disgruntled Buck had 
taken his mud-spattered car to the garage, and 
Helen was still standing on the veranda of her 
house, looking out over her small world. 

234 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

The rain had passed like a silver veil over the 
hills. The clouds, split by this March wind, were 
rolling back like huge wagon covers. The grass 
was beginning to show a misty green on the lawn. 
Pink petals of peach blossoms, blown from the 
orchard behind the house, lay in rifts above it. 
The flowering shrubs, massed on either side of 
the driveway, were budding. The elm trees were 
shaking their beards of bloom. The last rays of 
the setting sun made all the windows of her house 
flame with golden light. 

She could not leave this place; this was her 
house and her world. Every bloom to be was so 
sweetly foretold to her in this warm air. She 
could not give it up. There must be something 
to live for and love. She suffered most from 
the breaking of this habit of loving. And the 
shock she had of discovering that she still loved 
her husband disturbed her more than the possible 
attitude Shannon might assume toward her. She 
was that far from suspecting, you understand, the 
imaginary activities of gossips who are never con¬ 
tented with the bare facts, but must invent ex¬ 
planations of these facts according to their 
fancies. 

Well, she decided, she would not go away. 
She would hold to her original plan for happi- 

235 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


ness. Surely there must be peace and joy in 
love you nurtured yourself. 

Then she turned and paced slowly the length 
of the veranda. Her step changed to increasing 
swiftness as she came back from the far end, her 
face also. She looked as she might have looked 
if flames enveloped her, and she was flying through 
the wind, a wildness and horror in her eyes. 

She dashed into the house, caught sight of the 
maid in coming up the hall, who halted abruptly 
at this sudden vision of her mistress. 

“Charlotte, get my things ready. Pack my 
trunk. I am leaving on the early morning train,” 
Helen exclaimed as she brushed past her and dis¬ 
appeared into her room. 


236 


CHAPTER XIX 


There is a place called an Inn above a city in 
the mountains—it was built only a few years ago 
by a man with a Brobdingnagian imagination—a 
huge pile of bowlders, tunneled and dragged 
down from the mountain sides and put together 
as if the ages had soldered them into a great 
castle. The walls within are rough and covered 
with strange scripts, fragments of great lines from 
great poets, sentences from philosophers and 
saints. It is not a place for tourists, but for 
people weary with the strife of living, made obedi¬ 
ent to peace and silence by exhaustion. 

I have seen this place. It is marvelous, and 
strangely effective morally. Bad people get a 
somnambulant look there, because they are sleep¬ 
walking in their virtues. They get a look of naive 
innocence; or, if the system of moral compensa¬ 
tion in them is broken, they take a horrified look 
around and escape on the next train. 

One morning, so early that the day was still 
a gray cavern between earth and sky with the wild 
March winds whirling in it, a slender woman de¬ 
scended from a taxicab at the gateway to the drive 

237 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


which led down the mountain slope to this Inn. 
She wore a blue coat with a fur collar drawn close 
about her fair face, a small fur hat with an ex¬ 
ceeding vivid rose tucked into the band of thicker 
fur around the crown and fitted so snugly that 
a mere line of her bright hair showed beneath. 
She had eyes the color of blue flowers, paler than 
violets, the kind that always look up at you mean¬ 
ingly from the cold ground in March—but you 
do not know what they mean—exactly as this 
woman’s eyes looked upward and abroad now 
beneath the narrow sweeping line of her swallow¬ 
winged brows. 

She was not young; she was touched with the 
same sadness of those pale blue flowers above 
the winter earth. But she appeared young in 
this half light of the early dawn. Any man at 
the sight of her, swinging gracefully down the 
winding road between the naked trees, beneath 
the pearling skies of daybreak, might have con¬ 
ceived the idea of courting her. But he would 
have dismissed it instantly after a nearer reading 
look. He would have perceived that she was al¬ 
ready “taken,” that she belonged either to a 
man or to his children. She was not in the pos¬ 
sessive case. 

She loitered along the way, as one familiar with 

238 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

this place, looking for remembered things, ferns 
between the rocks, puffs of green moss above these 
rocks, flashes of wild azalea deeply bowered 
among the laurel bushes, tall stalks of shooting 
star blossoms white against the gray bluff, and a 
path leading from the roadway up the side of the 
bluff. I suppose there is not even one little high 
place on this earth which has not somewhere 
upon it a path that goes to the top. And fre¬ 
quently the idlest people in the world make them. 
It is due to the futile persistence of the altar in¬ 
stinct in them. 

She had come down into the paved plaza in 
front of the Inn before the porter carrying her 
bags overtook her. She followed him through the 
door and paused at the breath-taking majesty of 
this huge room. Filled with guests, its dignity 
was diminished; but bare and solemn and silent 
in this early morning hour, it was tremendous. 
She cast a glance upward at the rough walls, 
scrolled over with those mighty texts taken from 
the Scriptures that men have made for them¬ 
selves, but not one from Moses or the Prophets 
—the idea being, I suppose, not to open the bleed¬ 
ing wounds of conscience in many guests by re¬ 
minders too authoritatively worded about their 
sins and trespasses. 


239 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


She caught sight of one at last from Marcus 
Aurelius as if she had been looking for it. The 
wisdom of it did not apply to her case, but it 
soothed her for that reason, because she remem¬ 
bered it as an exit she used to take from her 
unhappy thoughts during those first months of 
her unnatural widowhood. When you are 
bedridden within by a secret grief, these old nega¬ 
tive philosophers are very good drug doctors for 
your complaints. This is why so many miserable 
women take to the narcotics of theosophy and 
other forms of recumbent mysticisms. They are 
mental opiates. 

“Good morning, Mrs. Cutter! Glad to see you 
back here,” the night clerk said, smiling sleepy- 
eyed at her as she approached the desk. He 
swung the register around and offered her a pen. 

“You received my wire 4 ?” she asked, when she 
had written her name. 

44 Yes, and fortunately we were able to reserve 
the same room for you,” he answered, evidently 
referring to a request which she had wired. 

“Shall you want a car, as usual, Mrs. Cutter 4 ?” 
he called after her as she was about to enter the 
elevator. 

“Not until this afternoon. How are the 
roads 4 ?” 


240 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Very good, at least your favorite one is,” he 
assured her. 

She had come to this Inn immediately after 
Cutter left her the previous year. She had recov¬ 
ered her health of mind and strength of body 
in this quiet place; she had profited by the pat¬ 
terns of peace and imagination it afforded; and 
she had spent much time visiting fine old houses, 
studying the manners, ways and clothes of the 
people who came and went. She acquired for the 
first time in her life some feeling and sense of ele¬ 
gance, lines and colors. And it was here that she 
met the architect who drew the plans for remodel¬ 
ing her house at Shannon. 

She resumed her old diversions now. She 
mingled little with the other guests, but spent her 
time driving about the country. She was still 
oppressed by the rude awakening she had, that 
last day in Shannon, to the fact that she loved 
and longed for her husband. She was disturbed 
and humiliated by this revelation, as one is by the 
awakening of some weakness we believe we have 
outgrown. 

The issue constantly in her mind was whether, 
after all, it would not be wiser to give up her 
house in Shannon and live this idle, pleasant exist¬ 
ence. There were no associations here to remind 

241 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


her of the past. And in spite of her huge expense 
in the effort to destroy these memories, it was 
after she came back to Shannon that the old pain 
and unhappiness had returned to overwhelm her. 
Then this issue was settled for her with a horrible, 
irrevocable decision, and she was flung violently 
back upon the one refuge, her house in Shannon, 
and the one plan she had for substituting love with 
affection, which she had been on the point of 
abandoning. 

One evening she came down late for dinner, 
passed through the swinging doors and sat down 
at the table reserved for her, which was near 
these doors. The room was filled with week-end 
guests. She had an excellent view of this bril¬ 
liant company. There were handsomely gowned 
women, rouged and sparkling with jewels; there 
were more men than were usually to be seen at 
leisure during this man-grasping war period; and 
quite a sprinkling of military officers, evidently 
on leave from Washington. 

Helen had given her order and sat idly scan¬ 
ning the scene before her, listening to snatches of 
conversation from the nearer tables. 

She was barely enough like these other 
women in her ivory-white, embroidered Canton 
crepe not to attract attention. She was pale, as 

242 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

they were painted. Her hair lay in a soft golden 
coil on her head, where their hair ruffled in a 
thousand glistening convolutions. Her lips were 
parted, showing the lapped edge of the two white 
teeth. The dark lashes of her eyes were more 
apparent, because of the blueness of these eyes 
and of the whiteness of her skin. 

Once she caught the steady, dark gaze of a 
woman seated directly opposite her, but at a 
distant table. She lifted her own glance and hur¬ 
ried by this overhead route back to the bunch of 
violets in the vase on her own table. She could 
not have told why she did this, probably for the 
same reason one flinches and draws back from 
the sudden flash of a brilliant flame. She sat 
staring at the violets, wondering about this 
woman, not intelligently, with a sort of amaze¬ 
ment which was not pleasant. Never before had 
she seen such a fury of commanding beauty. She 
thought she must be tall. She was very dark— 
olive skin, flushed like a velvet rose; black hair, 
daringly coiffured and heightened by a Spanish 
comb; a straight, imperious nose; a fine-lipped 
mouth, red and cruelly turned to mirth. But the 
fury of her beauty lay in the smoking black eyes. 
And the maroon velvet gown she wore seemed 
somehow to enhance the heat of terrible, searing 

243 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


beauty, as if the body of this woman had been 
forged, slim and strong, in a furnace and still 
glowed dangerously and dully. 

Helen wondered why she had not seen her 
when she entered the dining room, for now she 
could almost hear her crackle. Yet she did not 
look up again in that direction. There was a 
man at the table with this woman, she knew; but 
she had been so startled by the native malice of 
those dark eyes that she had only a blurred im¬ 
pression of his back. 

Suddenly there was a sound in this place where 
the confused murmur of many voices made a thou¬ 
sand sounds. It was the rich, rollicking laugh 
of a man, one high note quickly suppressed. 

Helen stiffened, her hand flew to her breast as 
if she had received a mortal wound. This trum¬ 
peting note of mirth was as much a part of her 
experience as her husband’s kisses had been. 
Her lips tightened, her eyes wide with horror flew 
this way and that, scanning every face. Then 
they fell again upon the dark woman whom she 
had forgotten in this sudden anguish. In¬ 
stantly she felt the red lash of this woman’s smile, 
as if she had reached across the space between 
them to strike a blow. There was contempt and 

244 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

recognition in the smoldering black eyes—no de¬ 
fiance, but triumph. 

The man facing her at this table with his back 
to Helen caught it, flirted his head around to find 
the object of it—and looked straight into the eyes 
of his wife! 

For one instant they held this silent interview 
with each other in that crowded room. Then the 
woman struck her hands together with a sharp, 
little smack, and let out a gale of laughter, too 
keen, too high in this decent place. Every head 
was turned toward her, every eye fell upon her in 
polite amazement. Still she laughed. And still 
George Cutter’s eyes followed his wife. For 
Helen had risen at the first note of that stinging 
laugh and had made her way blindly from the 
room. 

“What happened 4 ?” asked a fat man, rolling a 
pop-eyed look across the table at his wife. 

“I didn’t see anything,” she replied, taking her 
soup with the absorption of an innocent person. 

“Who was the pale lady? Didn’t you see her 
going out?” 

“A lot of people are coming in and going out,” 
his wife returned, skinning the bottom of her soup 
plate with her spoon. 

245 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“And there’s the one that did the laugh,” he 
said, nodding at the woman. 

“She looks like a jade; probably is one,” his 
wife announced, with one appraising look. 

“Fellow with her is all in then—head down, 
knees sprung, tail drooping. He’s come a cropper 
and knows it. Look at him, Lily.” 

The old Lily looked at the man before the 
“jade” indifferently, then passed the look on to 
the service door from whence cometh, or should 
come, the next course of this very good dinner. 
“Henry, you are a born scandalmonger,” she said 
reproachfully. 

“No, it’s an acquired taste, but I have it; and 
if ever I saw a fine scene in a matrimonial melo¬ 
drama, I’ve just witnessed one. Pale lady’s the 
wife, t’other one’s the gallant gal bandit, and the 
man’s the victim,” he snickered. 

Before these guests had finished dining, Helen 
Cutter had left the Inn. 

A week later Charlotte received a wire from 
her mistress, instructing her to send Buck with 
the car to Atlanta in time to meet a certain train 
at the Terminal Station on a certain day. This 
message was sent from Baltimore, which had not 
been Mrs. Cutter’s destination when she left 
home, Charlotte observed with a sniff. She did 

246 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

not like Mrs. Cutter’s ways, referring to this ten¬ 
dency she had of flying about the world alone 
when she had a perfectly good maid, who had ex¬ 
pected to accompany her. And she did not like 
the company she kept, referring to Shippen who 
was the only visitor she had received. And what 
was more to the point, she had no idea of being 
buried alive in this little speck of a town. There¬ 
fore she meant to go back to Atlanta in the car, 
and stay there—strong emphasis on the last two 
words. 

It was known in Shannon that “Helen Cutter 
had gone again.” But as late as the third week 
in April, no one knew that she had returned. 
There was a rumor current that probably she 
would not come back, since she must have realized 
that everybody knew what had happened. 

Then Mrs. Flitch, who was out selling Liberty 
Bonds one afternoon, passed the Cutter place and 
beheld a baby carriage on the lawn! Not only 
that, but the carriage was obviously occupied, be¬ 
cause Maria, togged out in a nurse’s cap and 
apron, was rolling it back and forth along the 
driveway. Mrs. Flitch said later that you could 
have “knocked her down with a feather,” but she 
decided no matter what kind of woman Helen 
Cutter was, it was no more than right that she 

247 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


should be called upon to buy these bonds. There¬ 
fore she turned in and walked briskly up the 
drive, meeting Maria directly front of the house. 

“Is Mrs. Cutter at horned” she asked, ignoring 
the old woman’s occupation. 

“No’m, she ain’t here; she’s gone to git a goat,” 
Maria answered. 

“A goat!” 

“Yes’m, a milk goat for the baby,” rolling her 
eyes. 

Mrs. Flitch stood perfectly still, the incarna¬ 
tion of malignant virtue, allowing her eyes to pass 
back and forth between Maria and the carriage. 
The wicker hood concealed the contents from her 
avid gaze. When she could endure her curiosity 
no longer, she moved slowly around to the front, 
but maintaining a decent distance, and stared. 

The baby recognized her at once, grinned, show¬ 
ing several teeth, and waved a highly ornamental 
teething ring. 

“Maria, whose child is this*?” Mrs. Flitch de¬ 
manded sternly, as if it was her duty to know. 

“Miss Helen says it’s her’n,” was the noncom¬ 
mittal reply. 

Followed a series of questions as to the age 
and possible complexion of this child. One con¬ 
fidence led to another question until Maria let go 

248 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

and told all that she knew, which only increased 
the cloud hanging over the origin of this baby. 

She said that she had gone in to clear the table 
that night in August of last year when Mr. Cutter 
left his wife. She had heard him tell her that he 
was going to leave her. 

“What did Mrs. Cutter say to that?” 

“Not a word. From first to last I did not hear 
her open her mouth, Mrs. Flitch. But he talked 
a right smart. I disremember what he said, but 
it wa’n’t praisin’. Then he goes out and banged 
the door after him. He ain’t been here since.” 

“And she does not hear from him?” 

“Not as I knows of. Miss Helen left ’reckly 
after he did, and she was gone five months. But 
she wa’n’t wid him. We used to git letters from 
her from a place in Ca’lina.” 

“Which, North or South Carolina?” 

“I don’t know, ’m. Buck read the letters.” 

“This is a strange baby,” Mrs. Flitch an¬ 
nounced grimly. 

Maria wiped her eyes. She was working her¬ 
self up to an emotional pitch by some act of 
memory. Mrs. Flitch waited for the revelation 
she knew must be coming. 

“I’m goin’ to tell you all I know about how 
come dis baby. Not as it kin explain somethings, 

249 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


like her having black hair and being dark com¬ 
plected, but it’s all I know,” she began. 

“Go on.” 

“After Mr. Cutter was gone, Miss Helen laid 
in bed three days. She jest laid there, white as a 
corpse, with her eyes open. She didn’t shed no 
tears and she didn’t say anything, mor’n for me 
to hand her a glass of water or somethin’ like 
that. Then one mornin’ she hops out of bed, 
dresses herself an’ goes downtown to the bank. 
While she was dressin’ I comes to the door to fetch 
her slippers, which I’d been polishin’ in the 
kitchen.” Maria left off and rolled her eyes 
lugubriously, as if such a tongue as she had could 
not reveal the rest. 

“Go on; what happened*?” 

“Mrs. Flitch,” lowering her voice to a tragic 
whisper, “she was talkin’ to herself! ‘Now,’ 
she says, ‘I kin have children.’ She said them 
words over and over, ’s if she was glad of the 
chance.” 

“But what did she mean 4 ?” 

“I d’no, ’m. I been in this world a long time, 
an’ I ain’t never heerd no ’oman, white or black, 
say sech things and her husband jest that minute 
’sertin’ her. But she’s done it—what she said 
she’d do. Here’s the child,” she concluded, stand- 

250 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

ing like a black exclamation point beside the baby 
carriage. 

Mrs. Flitch counted her fingers surreptitiously 
and regarded the infant once more with a sort of 
expert scientific stare. 

“Where is the maid? I understood Mrs. Cutter 
had a maid? 7 ’ she asked suddenly, as if she was on 
the point of subpoenaing a more competent wit¬ 
ness. 

“She’s gone. Said she didn’t like the looks 
of it.” 

“Of what?” 

“I d’no, ’m.” 

“Maria,” Mrs. Flitch said after a staccato si¬ 
lence, “you need not tell Mrs. Cutter that I 
called.” 

“La! Mrs. Flitch, hit don’t make no differ¬ 
ence. This baby ain’t no secret, whatever else 
it is. Miss Helen don’t keer who knows she’s 
got it,” Maria called after her. 

All these months this servant had known what 
Helen believed no one knew in Shannon, the 
minutest details of that last scene with her hus¬ 
band. 

There are no secrets. We may give alms so 
privately that the twin right hand of our left 
hand remains blissfully ignorant of what we spent 

251 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


on these alms. Nothing is easier than to conceal 
a good deed, if you really wish to do so, because 
it is not our nature to suspect each other of secret 
goodness. It is hard enough to obtain credit 
when we stand on the street corner and proclaim 
our charity in a loud voice, or get the whole beau¬ 
tiful thing exploited in the public press. This 
is what we usually do, being in some mortal doubt 
whether, after all, the reward promised by our 
Heavenly Father will be conferred openly enough 
or soon enough to pay for the unnatural expense 
of secrecy. This is a mistake, of course, because, 
while we are duly credited, the smiling, cynical in¬ 
terpretation placed upon our motive takes the 
shine off the deed and the alms. 

But let one of the best of us become involved 
in a doubtful deed, however innocently, and it is 
known. Witnesses spring from the very ground 
to swear to your guilt, even if you have gone into 
your closet to taste a pleasant fault. Even if, 
as in Helen’s case, the evidence is flimsy and cir¬ 
cumstantial, there is always an eye that sees, an 
ear that hears, a tongue to tell what happened or 
what apparently happened. The deeper truth— 
the innocence of the wicked, the guilt of the saints 
>.—remains hidden save from the omniscience of 
the Almighty. This is why it seems to me highly 

252 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

probable that there really may be a super-record 
kept in a Book of Life far removed from the laws 
and judgments of this present world. We shall 
be graded accordingly, exalted or demoted, not so 
furiously condemned as our own heinous imagi¬ 
nations demand. 


253 


CHAPTER XX 


The flamboyant display Helen made of her 
baby shocked Shannon and finally conquered the 
willful suspicions entertained by her neighbors. 
Her diffidence and reserve vanished. She was 
exalted. She glowed. She had passed into an¬ 
other state of being. This child had related her 
to everybody. 

She would have Buck stop the car before the 
Shaw residence and summoned Mrs. Shaw forth 
to look at it and advise her about whether to keep 
stockings on it or not. Mrs. Shaw said she never 
did. 

On the other hand, Mrs. Arnold said that would 
depend upon whether the baby was cutting her 
eye teeth. In that case she advised not only stock¬ 
ings, but a flannel band about the body. Did 
Mrs. Cutter know whether the little thing was ap¬ 
proaching its second summer and stomach and eye 
teeth or not? This question was put very cas¬ 
ually, but with a shrewd glance. 

Helen said she would “see.” Whereupon she 
thrust an exploring finger into the squirming in¬ 
fant’s mouth, felt about in there, withdrew it, and 
announced that she could detect no heralding 

254 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

signs of these malignant teeth, but they might be 
coming. This was an unusually precocious baby! 
Therefore she would get the bands and keep the 
stockings on. 

Then she passed on, apparently with no com¬ 
punctions about having defrauded Mrs. Arnold 
of legitimate information about the baby. 

But that lady hurried across the street to tell 
Mrs. Flitch something. “It is not her own child, 
my dear; I am sure of that,” she said, after re¬ 
porting what Helen had done. 

“Well, it could be,” Mrs. Flitch insisted. 

“But it isn’t. I don’t think she knows exactly 
how old the child is. And a real mother, you 
know, can feel when her baby is teething.” 

Mrs. Flitch nodded emphatically, held her note 
of silence a moment, then added: “If it isn’t her 
own, there is no telling what kind of baby it is, nor 
how it will turn out.” 

“Well, it is turning out happily for that poor 
girl anyway. She looks years younger, and 
happy,” Mrs. Arnold replied. 

“If Mr. Flitch deserted me, I couldn’t be 
happy. I’d never hold up my head again.” 

“She has courage.” 

“And she seems to have money,” Mrs. Flitch 
put in. 


255 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“Yes, Mr. Arnold thinks she has ample 
means.” 

“Then it must be alimony.” 

“We have heard nothing of a divorce.” 

“I think, when people are married, they should 
live together until death parts them. And if they 
won’t, they should make a clean breast of it, and 
let folks know exactly where they stand, inside 
the law or out of it,” Mrs. Flitch announced 
virtuously. 

“Nothing like that is ever hidden. In time I 
suppose something clarifying will happen.” 

“Well, I hope it won’t be disgraceful.” 

“It is not easy for scandal to touch a woman 
who devotes her life to bringing up children. Did 
you ever think of that*?” Mrs. Arnold shot back. 
“I think we should stand by Mrs. Cutter and help 
her all we can with this baby,” she added. 

“Oh, I’m willing to do my duty. But she never 
gives me the chance to do anything. I’m the 
mother of five healthy children, yet she will pass 
by my door and ask somebody about that baby’s 
diet who never had a child,” Mrs. Flitch com¬ 
plained. 

Thus the wind of private opinion, which is 
more dangerous than public opinion, veered and 
changed toward Helen Cutter. Her skies cleared, 

256 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

without her ever having suspected the fury with 
which they were charged against her. Of all the 
good women I have ever known, she was the least 
concerned for her reputation. And this is one of 
the weaknesses of that class, a craven, almost 
guilty fear of evil tongues, which more vulnerable 
women do not share. 

There were broken hours, I suppose, when some 
fleeting vision of the past absorbed her peace and 
joy. We never do escape those whispering 
tongues of memory that make speech with us 
from the years behind us. Sometimes in the late 
summer afternoon Helen, walking in her garden, 
would halt, transfixed as if a blow had fallen 
upon her. For the briefest moment she would 
see her young husband swinging along the path 
that led through the old shrubbery to this garden, 
his eyes fixed brightly upon her, the dear object of 
his love and hopes. And her heart leaped as in 
those first happy years. Then she would close 
her eyes, not always in time to hold back the tears. 
But if one is proud enough, there are tears which 
leave no trace upon a woman’s face. 

More frequently however, it was that last 
sight she had of him in the dining room of the 
Inn, held so firmly in the grasp of another woman 
that he dared not to rise when she, his wife, passed 

257 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


so near her skirts almost brushed him. She would 
never forget the livid shame and horror when he 
looked back and caught her eye nor the woman’s 
crackling laugh. Sometimes this scene flared be¬ 
fore her, and she saw herself, with her hand still 
pressed to her breast, making her blind, stagger¬ 
ing escape. It was a kind of insurance she car¬ 
ried against the awakening of the old tenderness 
for her husband. 

A year had gone by, another spring was at 
hand; and little Helen was learning to toddle on 
her sturdy legs, a pink rose of a baby with short, 
dark curls. 

“She is so good. Are all little children good?” 
Helen asked, smiling at Mrs. Arnold, who was 
paying one of her frequent visits. 

“At this age, yes,” the elder woman replied 
dryly. 

“And I have so little time to devote to her, 
now that the other baby has come,” Helen sighed. 

“The other baby!” Mrs. Arnold gasped. 

“Why, don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? 
I have just got a lovely boy,” Helen informed 
her. 

“Here? You have him now?” 

Helen nodded. “Come and see him. He is too 
young to bring out yet,” she explained. 

258 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


She led the way to the small crib in the nursery, 
where a very young infant lay asleep. 

“It is a fine child,” Mrs. Arnold announced 
gravely. “How many do you expect to—have*?” 
she asked. 

“I don’t know yet. It will depend on how I 
get on with these; but at least three. This is 
little Samuel, named for father. The next one 
will be a girl, named Mary Elizabeth, for mother. 
I had to call the first one Helen. And I am 
afraid I shall always love her best. She was my 
first happiness, you see, after—after,” she re¬ 
peated, “unhappiness. I doubt if the others will 
mean so much to me. Do they 4 ?” she asked anx¬ 
iously. “I mean do mothers grow to love all their 
children alike 4 ?” 

“I don’t know, my dear; but you will,” Mrs. 
Arnold answered, her eyes filling with tears. 

“They are treasures I am laying up for my old 
age. They will be my life and joy and hope, 
when I shall have grown too old to achieve these 
things. Their laughter will lift me. Their love 
will be my perpetual spring. And we shall have 
weddings in this house,” she concluded. 

“You believe in marriage?” the other could 
not refrain from asking. 

“Oh, yes. Even in my own.” 

259 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“You would go back to your husband?’' 

“Never.” 

There was a silence. 

“But if he comes back to you?” 

“He will not come,” she returned. 

When I came to know her later, she must have 
been confirmed in this opinion. For I had lived 
a year in Shannon before I learned that George 
Cutter was not a dead and buried man. He had 
passed with that flotsam and jetsam tide created 
by the Great War. And the House of Helen had 
become the center of social life in Shannon. She 
was a sedate hostess, always garnished with her 
children. She had declared this kind of natural 
peace, and kept it in a world rocking with the 
confusion which followed the war. 

She belonged to the deep furrow of life, where 
the soil is rich and strong. If she had been an 
herb of the fields, she would have been an ever¬ 
green herb. If she had been a tree, her boughs 
would never have shed their leaves. If she had 
been a rose, she would have bloomed fairest above 
a hoarfrost. The lives of many of us, who were 
drawn to her during this time by one sort of dis- 
tress or another, took root in her quiet heart, and 
it was her wish that not one of these should suffer 
or perish. 


260 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

The ignobly wise believe that this opulence of 
kindness is no more than the manifestation of the 
nature of women, not a virtue, but the maternal 
instinct common to all mammals. 

If you ask me, I should point to the prevailing 
type of modern woman as an example of what 
mere Nature does for a woman. She is a brilliant 
creature, ready to show the iridescent wings of 
her charms to all men, not one man; a childless 
wife, ready to sue for her liberty and alimony on 
the slightest provocation; an ambitious person, 
futilely active, who farms out her home to ser¬ 
vants that she may become the dupe and hand¬ 
maiden of politicians. She belongs to the fash¬ 
ionable scrubwoman class, who take the job of 
cleaning up the town and setting the table for the 
next convention. She is subsidized by compli¬ 
ments and favors. There is nothing perma¬ 
nent in her; and she will not increase nor 
multiply after the manner of her kind. She 
is the lightest, most transient phase of her sex 
we have yet seen. But she is astonishingly nat¬ 
ural. 

Few tales end with the death of the principal 
characters. They usually end just as the heroes 
and heroines begin to live happy ever after. And 
you are obliged to take the author’s word for that, 

261 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


because the statement is contrary to all human 
experience. 

Still you must expect the approaching end of 
this chronicle, because the House of Helen has 
been established. There remains one last scene. 


262 


CHAPTER XXI 


Beginning with the year 1921 many men, who 
had too swiftly acquired fortunes in the handling 
of government contracts, began to pass under the 
rod of investigations concerning such wartime 
profits. George Cutter was one of these. Some¬ 
body, with a talent for figuring up the cost and 
sales price of lumber left over from a half- 
finished training camp for soldiers, discovered 
that the said George William Cutter had failed 
to turn in one million eight hundred and some odd 
thousands of dollars due the government. This 
statement appeared in a New York paper. Noth¬ 
ing followed. And nothing was heard of Mr. 
Cutter for another year. 

Then one afternoon in May, of 1922, a corpu¬ 
lent, extremely bald-headed man, with a seamy 
face and pouched eyes, stood up in the day coach 
of a train which was pulling into Shannon. He 
reached for his hat in the rack overhead, put it 
on jauntily, pulled down his vest, which had 
wrinkled up so often when he sat down and had 
been pressed so rarely that it remained faintly 
fluted diagonally across his broad expanse. He 

263 


i 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

squared his shoulders, you may say with a former 
air, and stepped briskly down the aisle and waited 
meekly on the platform between the coaches while 
several people descended at the station. Then 
he came down, and moved off hurriedly. 

No one recognized him. Misfortune does some¬ 
thing to you. It changes your manner, and takes 
the swagger out of your step, especially if you are 
the author of your misfortune. 

This man walked heavily out Wiggs Street, 
looking about him furtively until he came to the 
Cutter residence. Then he lifted his eyes and 
beheld it in utter amazement—a fine, wide¬ 
winged, colonial mansion where a cottage had 
stood when he left Shannon five years before. 

“I have missed her. She is gone, 55 he mumbled. 

At this moment he caught sight of a small girl, 
who had already got sight of him and was re¬ 
garding him curiously from the shade of a lilac 
bush. 

There was a time when he would have strode 
finely up to the door, rung the bell and inquired 
for Mrs. Cutter; but now he was not equal to that 
display. He had lost his presence. He would 
get the information he needed from this child 
after the manner of the class to which he now 
belonged, the surreptitious class. 

264 



THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


“How do you do, my dear,” he said from the 
pavement to the small lady under the lilac 
bush. 

She stuck a finger in her mouth and continued 
to regard him. 

“Who lives here?” 

“My muvver,” she answered, not pridefully, 
but with assurance. 

“And what is your name?” 

“Helen.” 

He sat down on the terraced wall and stared 
so long at the ground that she feared he had for¬ 
gotten her, and she was not of the age or sex to 
endure the idea of being forgotten. 

“My muvver’s name is Helen, too,” she in¬ 
formed him. “And my brover’s name is Sammy. 
What’s yours?” 

“Mine’s George. Ever heard it?” he asked. 

She shook her head. 

“What is your father’s name?” 

“We don’t keep him wiv us,” she explained. 

“Oh, you don’t? Where is he?” 

She did not know where this parent was, but 
she could show him Sammy. And off she ran, 
dark curls flying. 

The man watched her. Then he fell again to 
staring at the ground. Fervent ejaculations oc- 

265 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


curred to him, but he uttered not a word. The 
histrionic had died in him. 

He saw a car coming rapidly along the street. 
When it passed, he would get up and move on. 
This house, these children made him a stranger 
and an outcast here as he was everywhere. Why 
had he returned 4 ? Why had he not accepted the 
sentence of shame and defeat, slid on down where 
men rest from honor and hope, that last refuge of 
complete degradation 4 ? 

But the car turned into the driveway, cover¬ 
ing him with dust as it whirled past, and through 
the dust he beheld the face of his wife. He came 
to his feet and followed with a hurried, shuf¬ 
fling step. He was still some distance away when • 
the driver halted before the house, then drove on 
out of sight. 

At this moment Helen, who had been about 
to mount the steps, caught sight of him. 

He came on, wondering if she recognized him. 

It was incredible that she should know him. 
When you have been defeated, degraded, caught 
the shadows of prison bars that never lift from 
before your vision, you do not expect recogni¬ 
tion; you only fear it. He feared now, with a sort 
of truculent impotence, what might be going to 
happen. Still he came on with that courage of 

266 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 

mean despair which men still show when they 
have fallen to the last degree of shameless shame. 

Their eyes met—hers calm and steady as the 
horizon of a perfect day, his wavering between 
doubt and determination. 

“Helen!” 

Her lips moved as if speechless words died 
there. 

Thus they stood, he at bay, she with the light 
falling upon her, grave and sweet, not condemn¬ 
ing him, seeing in him the answer that love and 
fate make to such women. 

“Helen,” he cried again, “are you my wife?” 

She lifted her hand in that old gesture to her 
breast, the same pale look of ineffable goodness 
which he remembered. Then, still looking back, 
she turned, mounted the steps and entered the 
door of her house and stood before him as if she 
waited. She showed against the shadows like 
the figure of a shrine upon a dark hillside above 
a dusty road over which pilgrims come and go. 
They are never moved, these shrines, from age to 
age. They are altars that do not fall. So are 
some women. They are the sanctuaries of man¬ 
kind. It is the fashion to despise them, but they 
hold the world together. 

Cutter came slowly up the step, with a flash 

267 


THE HOUSE OF HELEN 


of life and hope in his face—an ignoble and 
worthless man made safe in the shelter of a 
woman’s heart, whose wish was that none should 
perish who looked to her for comfort. It was 
not love, but honor that opened the door of her 
house to him. 


THE END 


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